Objects Of Interest

Learning objects promise a brave new world of easily accessible and individualised learning, made possible by the flexible deployment over networks of small, reusable components from multiple sources. “Wow,” you say, “if only we knew what on earth these learning objects were and how we’re supposed to make use of them, we may even have ourselves a few.” In the hope that you will, indeed, have a few and that this brave new world does not disappear in a haze of confusion and hyperbole, I set about here to provide a workable definition of learning objects and to explain how they just might make a difference to real-world training. You could call this an object lesson.

Where objects come from

Programmers would like to think that they invented objects, that with object-orientated design and programming they originated a completely new way of thinking about the construction of complex systems. However, chances are that if you’re at home right now and that at any time in the past few years a child has been playing in your room, then there’s evidence of object-orientation hiding somewhere in those dark corners behind the TV and the sofa. I’m talking Lego – small, reusable components, built to simple but exacting standards, that can be selectively applied by kids of all ages to construction tasks both great and small. Lego endures in these days of videogames and short attention spans because it’s portable, durable, sharable, and accessible – qualities that, come to think of it, can rarely be applied to learning resources.

Learning objects are an application of object-orientated thinking to the world of learning. Like Lego bricks, learning objects are small reusable components – video demonstrations, tutorials, procedures, stories, assessments, simulations, case studies – but rather than use them to build castles, you use them to build people.