Information Technology Reference
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•
The use of standards and the extent to which
they are decomposable or composable.
exist, but seem to be rarely used in the LO
community.
•
It should be prescribed that the architecture
of LOs be layered as a part of the best prac-
tice, in order to separate data, presentation
and application logics. This would enhance
the level of decomposability and context
independence. Layering (or multi-tier ar-
chitectures) is frequently used in many
other areas of application/system develop-
ment for the very same reasons.
According to Paulsson and Naeve (2006),
“many of those issues are directly or indirectly
related to the lack of explicit definitions and clear
architectural models, together with technical (as
well as other) quality criteria that are directly
related to technical architecture. Many of the
pedagogical dependencies and shortcomings seem
to be caused by technical bindings of content to
presentation and application logics as well as built
in instructional design elements”.
The study of Paulsson and Naeve (2006) has
shown that there is a huge discrepancy between
different definitions of the LO concept. This makes
it difficult (if not impossible) to develop LOs bear-
ing the qualities that LOs are often ascribed to in
terms of reusability, interoperability, and context
independence. Paulsson and Naeve (2006) suggest
the technical and pedagogical definitions of LOs to
be separated - within a common definition of LOs.
To address the identified problems Paulsson
and Naeve (2006) offer six areas for action in order
to establish technological quality criteria for LOs:
•
Pedagogy should preferably be kept out-
side the LO in order to facilitate pedagogi-
cal context independence. It is suggested
the pedagogical model to be added as LOs
are assembled to form learning modules.
Using such a methodology, it becomes pos-
sible to perform pedagogical contextual-
ization at a later stage in the authoring pro-
cess, and enhance reusability of different
components as well as mutual pedagogical
context independence of components.
According to Paulsson & Naeve (2006), in
some cases there might be a need to add such
'instructional properties' inside LOs, but, in such
cases, this should be handled in a separate layer,
using standard specifications for that purpose, and
not by hard coded implementations.
•
There is a need for a common (more nar-
row) definition of what is, and what is not
a LO.
•
In connection to narrowing down the defi-
nition, there is a need for a taxonomy that
is reflected in the definition where granu-
larities as well as special properties are
regarded.
2.1.3. The MELT Quality
Criteria of Learning Objects
MELT (2008) set of the LOs quality criteria has
been divided into five categories:
•
Standards used for LOs should be extended
to go beyond descriptive information, such
as metadata, sequencing, and packaging to
also embrace standards for interfaces, 'ma-
chine readable' descriptions of technical
properties and interaction interfaces.
1. Pedagogical.
2. Usability.
3. Reusability.
4. Accessibility.
5. Production.
•
There is a need to establish standards and
recommendations that address the inter-
nal use of data formats and data structure.
General technology standards of this kind
The list is by no means prescriptive and not
all of the criteria can always be applied to all
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