Abstract
Abstract: This chapter by Duncan is the first in the book after Littlejohn's introduction. It provides a useful overview of the issues surrounding granularisation and lays the ground for the rest of the book. The granular size of learning object is a fundamental consideration if the goal is to facilitate the sharing and reuse of learning resources within a learning object economy. The chapter begins with a discussion of what a learning object is and why the conditions in education are now favourable towards the idea of a learning object economy. It then discusses the aggregation and disaggregation of learning objects including the role of metadata in supporting search and aggregation. The chapter mainly focuses on learning objects in terms of information or subject content. It also touches on the idea that, to achieve effective learning, learning objects would need to be combined with other components, especially activities involving people; and it alludes to the fact that 'the highest level of aggregation' would inter-relate learning objects with a learning design or pedagogical strategy. The chapter also discusses interoperability. All digital learning systems must be able to input and exchange each others' learning objects if these objects are to be shared across educational communities. Duncan concludes that the creation of stand-alone learning objects might appear to reduce the coherence of online courses but that this is not dissimilar to the traditional courses where coherence is supplied by the teacher who aggregates and integrates course components.
This review starts by commenting on the way learning objects are conceptualised by Duncan and others. It then moves on to draw out some of the pedagogical or educational issues that arise from that conceptualisation.
Editors: Allison Littlejohn and Simon Buckingham Shum