The term "learning objects" gets bandied about online teaching and learning circles quite a bit these days. What do providers of online learning need to know about learning objects?

The design and development of learning objects begins with your digital media assets, including text, images, animation sequences, sounds, video clips, HTML documents or XML documents, all typically linked together into a loosely coupled relationship through references on an HTML page. A learning object represents an evolution of this approach, where these digital media assets are packaged for distribution into a tightly coupled unit.

In order to understand the concept of learning objects, there are few basic concepts that you need to remember.

Related but independent of the content contained within a learning object is the "meta-data" (data about data) with which the learning object is described from the outside. "Meta-data" is made up of a set of attributes, (typically captured in the form of an XML document) that together describe the content contained within the object. In some courseware delivery systems, the attributes are used entirely for the purpose of indexing and uniquely registering the object. In other systems, certain of the information contained may also be used for display purposes, (e.g. title, table of contents, etc.).

Another aspect of the technology surrounding learning objects relates to the communication between an object and the learning management or courseware management system through which the object is served. When an object is requested, there are protocols related to the passing meta-data information related to the registration and display of the object. Similarly, when an object is closed there are protocols related to the reporting of information related to the objects use and/or the users behavior and performance.

Collections of learning objects - the presentations, exercises, tools that compose a given course(s)- are typically stored in a database or content "repository". Each object in the repository is identified uniquely through the attributes (or "tags") with which it is described.

Learning objects provide several important advantages for publishers and distributors of online learning.

Breaking down or "chunking" content into learning objects creates the potential for content to be reused across courses. For example, an overview presentation on the core principles of Biology could be re-used across a range of courses. One of the challenges to achieving object reuse from an instructional design standpoint is conceiving of the learning object as a stand-alone entity, independent of the learning context in which it appears.

This advantage alludes to the promise of content becoming portable across courseware management and/or learning management systems. Put simply, the idea is that a publisher can create a collection of learning objects surrounding a particular topic and those objects - by virtue of the their reusability and their adherence to standard tagging schemes and communication protocols - may be delivered across a range of courseware delivery systems. Conversely, from the standpoint of the organization delivering the courseware, portability provides the opportunity to combine and deliver courseware content from different publishers.

A long-standing aspiration among leading thinkers in the online learning industry has been to create highly adaptive personalized learning experiences, where content is served dynamically to a learner based on his/her individual strengths and weaknesses. This concept is based on marrying content stored in the form of learning objects with courseware delivery systems that possess the intelligence (in the form of rules) to dynamically determine the composition and sequence of learning objects to serve to the individual learner.

One of the keys to realizing the benefits of a learning object-based approach to courseware design and development is the widespread adoption of standards for describing, (or "packaging") learning objects and for handling the communication protocols between learning objects and the learning management and courseware management systems in which they are served.

There are several efforts under way to establish standards for learning objects, the most significant being the combined effort of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative (http://www.adlnet.organd the Instructional Management Systems (IMS) Global Learning Consortium (http://www.imsglobal.org) to promote the "SCORM" (Shareable Content Object Reference Model") standard.

However, standards take time to develop and final resolution and adoption are still in the future. That being said, publishers and providers of online learning content, who want to prepare themselves for the coming revolution, can and should aggressively move to adopt a "learning-object based" approach towards the design, development and delivery of their content.

Listed below are some recommendations for steps you can take to adopt a definitive learning object-based approach to the design and development of online courses and programs:

• Research the emerging industry standards and learn about the issues associated with learning objects. Ensure that work done in the interim is conceived with the evolving standards in mind.
   
• Develop a model for producing object-based courses. Consider your courses as being composed of content objects and identify the types of objects you intend to create, (i.e. presentations, assessments, exercises, etc.). Determine the tools/templates you will need to build them and develop a tagging scheme that both conforms to industry standards and addresses your unique needs.
   
• Consider learning object-based design from an instructional design standpoint in order to develop guidelines and conventions for course design. For example, one implication of adopting an object-based design approach is that the scripted introductions to a given object can no longer include an explicit reference to content based on sequence (e.g. In the previous section...).
   
• As a by-product of developing an object-based production model and considering the instructional design implications, you should develop a set of requirements that can be used to evaluate third party courseware management systems, production tools and other infrastructure components. With these requirements in hand, you should challenge the various vendors to describe how their product(s) can or will support the requirements that you develop.