Working with objects

What’s to stop us bounding ahead to make objects the basis for our learning architecture? Well, in practical terms, not a lot really. We now have standards for labelling-up objects so they can be located and used sensibly by search engines and learning management systems. Just about every e-learning publisher as well as providers of authoring and learning management systems either already is or soon will be compliant with these standards. In addition, most publishers are starting to offer their products in small, reusable chunks, whether or not they yet call them learning objects.

The real barrier is cultural and psychological. So much of our experience of media and learning events is essentially sequential. Whether we’re talking about TV programmes, lectures, classes, films, concerts, plays, we’re used to starting at the beginning and sticking it through to the end. These media and events do have component parts, but they’re hard-wired together in an immutable sequence.

In the face of so much information available to us, particularly over networks, we’re beginning to get used to consuming media in much smaller chunks. What we’re not so used to is developing new media, in this case for learning, without the comfort of knowing that we have control over the learner’s attention for a sustained period. We have to provide learners with resources that are flexible and adaptable, well-targeted and easily-accessible. In short, we have to start thinking in terms of objects and that’s a new paradigm for learning designers and developers.