Collaborative teaching with learning objects in an international, non-profit context. The example of the Ariadne Community

Abstract

The ARIADNE European projects (1996–2000) developed tools and methodologies for producing and managing ‘pedagogical elements’, storing them in knowledge pools and building and supporting training curricula. These tools were in wide use around the world, both in academic and corporate sites, at the end of the projects. The ARIADNE Foundation was therefore created to exploit and further develop these tools and concepts. As a not-for-profit-oriented association, members contribute according to their nature and capacity. The Members' community (75 members from 20 countries in 2002) has to respect a philosophy based on cooperation between educational bodies, with the motto ‘Share and reuse’. Active members create learning objects stored in an internationally distributed knowledge pool system. Indexing with clear and precise metadata helps to retrieve appropriate documents to reuse them. © 2003, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.