Learning Pod: A New Paradigm for Reusability of Learning Objects

Abstract

Learning objects have long promised dramatic savings of time and money in course and curricu- lum development, but they have failed to deliver the return on investment that seems a natural extension of their existence - reusability. Because a single hour of online instruction can take up to 300 hours to develop, reusability is the core value message offered by learning object promot- ers, from the earliest days to the present. Yet, after 12 years of successive evolution, learning objects are still primarily a collection of stand-alone modules that rarely interconnect outside of strictly controlled regimes, such as those imposed by corporate and military training guidelines. Among the contributing factors to this impediment are definition of a learning object, size of a learning object and aesthetics of a learning object. In response to this shortcoming, we propose to introduce a new entity - the learning pod. Engi- neered for reusability, the learning pod incorporates several modules that bring current technol- ogy to create an experientially seamless interconnection between disparate learning objects. These modules communicate with one another to build a consistent unit of instruction that uses several learning objects depending on the requirements. Several technologies including semantic web, XSL/XML and CSS are utilized to achieve presentation cohesiveness.