Colleen is a freelance instructional designer. She recently talked with her client about the possibility of working on an exciting e-Learning development project. However, her client wants her to design it with learning objects, so that they can reuse them in other projects. She has years of experience in designing instruction for classroom training, and developing some online reference materials — but reusable learning objects? She has no experience in developing e-Learning programs with reusable learning objects, and she is not sure where to start. She wants this contract, so she is desperately looking for information. She keeps wondering: Which software should I use? Are there any “recipe” books or articles out there? Help!
Colleen visited my office a couple of weeks ago, looking for such information. She didn’t have much time to learn all about e-Learning development. I wished I had a complete “recipe” book, made just for her project. I didn’t. Many instructional designers may face a situation like Colleen’s. Knowledge in traditional instructional design methods definitely helps them move into an e-Learning arena, but e-Learning design and development requires new sets of knowledge and skills. In this article, I intend to provide information that helps practitioners like Colleen make that transition.
Learning objects and reusable learning objects
What is a (reusable)
learning object? The term, learning objects, is a popular buzzword in the
e-Learning field. One good source for a definition of a learning object (LO) is
the
A common understanding is that a LO provides a small chunk of learning activity, built around a single learning objective. One benefit of utilizing LOs — a.k.a., reusable learning objects (RLOs) — in e-Learning projects is that you can reuse them when the same learning objectives are part of another learning situation, which increases cost-effectiveness.
However, learning objectives come in different shapes and sizes; thus, so do LOs. For example, compare the following learning objectives — (a) Define plastic de- formation; (b) Given a hypothetical scenario, explain why the presented behavior is or is not workplace harassment; and (c) Among a list of banking accounts, recognize potentially fraudulent accounts.
A LO that teaches a simple concept such as plastic deformation may take less time than instruction on how to recognize workplace harassment. Also, while one can learn certain information along with other chunks of information in a cluster form, some tasks such as recognizing potentially fraudulent accounts may need to be learned through a series of instruction (or LOs), built upon job-related prerequisite knowledge. Therefore, before attempting to construct the overall structure of a RLO-based e-Learning course, it is essential for e-Learning practitioners to understand content hierarchy with different levels of LOs.
Content hierarchy
Autodesk, Inc. and Cisco Systems, Inc. are early adopters of RLO strategies (see Hodgins, 2002 and Cisco, 2003 in the References at the end of this article). Built upon Autodesk’s content model, Cisco has developed its own e-Learning framework and authoring guidelines, describing the design of modular e-Learning contents in hierarchical format. One way to understand a hierarchical content structure of an e-Learning course is to think about how a textbook is usually organized. As shown in Figure 1, which is adapted from Cisco’s framework, a textbook may contain several chapters, each chapter has several sections, and each section contains text that accompanies some photos or diagrams. Similarly, you can design an e-Learning course with several lessons, each lesson has several topics, and you can present each topic with multimedia such as text, images, animation, audio, and video clips.
Different levels of LOs
Conceptualization of the content hierarchy of an e-Learning course, as shown in Figure 1, also makes it easier to understand that there are different levels of LOs, such as course-level, lesson-level or topic-level LOs. Again, this is derived from the fact that there are multiple levels of learning objectives and a LO is built around a learning objective. When a course is defined as an entire instructional unit, a course-level objective is referred to as a terminal objective, and its enabling objectives derived from a series of lessons are known as subordinate objectives (Dick, Carey, and Carey, 2005). It is also possible to write a learning objective for each topic included in a lesson. For example, Figure 2 is a visual illustration of a simple content analysis, showing three levels of objectives; a course-level, a lesson-level, and a topic-level. Each box presented in the figure represents a LO; thus, there are course level, lesson-level, and topic-level LOs. That is, e-Learning practitioners should be aware that when the term LOs is used, it may refer to different levels of LOs in the content hierarchy.
Figure 1 The hierarchical content structure in a book and an e-Learning course.
Figure 2 A simple content analysis.
A lesson-level LO (RLO)
This granularity principle applied to e-Learning design, as illustrated in Figure 2, makes it possible to assemble and reassemble chunks of e-Learning content in different ways, as needed. In theory, LOs at any level may be reused; thus, making any level of Los into RLOs. However, a commonly accepted practice is to refer to a lesson-level LO as a RLO. A formula for designing a lesson-level LO, based on Cisco’s RLO strategy, is as follows:
Lesson = Overview + Several topics + Summary + Practice + Assessment
Practice questions are often included in the relevant topics:
Lesson = Overview + Several topics w/practice + Summary + Assessment
Also, you can combine lesson-level assessment questions and present them in a course-level assessment at the end of the course. Then, an alternative formula for a lesson-level LO is as follows:
Lesson = Overview + Several topics w/practice + Summary.
Cisco’s guidelines refer to a set of an overview and a summary included in a lesson as a wrapper. The beginning part of a wrapper (the overview part) prepares learners to acquire new knowledge, and the ending part of a wrapper (the summary part) helps them reflect on the lesson they have just completed. In a way, designing an e-Learning lesson is similar to making a hamburger. A hamburger is served with a bun, sliced in half (i.e., a wrapper), and you choose what goes inside the bun based on what you want. Similarly, the main ingredients of an e-Learning lesson are a series of topics with practice, wrapped by an overview and a summary. You can assemble a different set of topics to design a lesson depending on the needs, just like you may make a single cheeseburger without onions for your child, while you make a double cheeseburger with a slice of tomato and onion for yourself.
