There has been considerable emphasis on the availability and reuse of learning content in recent years. Since 2000, the ADL initiative has refined the recommendations contained in the SCORM documents through progressive stages represented in the SCORM 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 documents. Fundamental to SCORM is the notion of the Shareable Content…

The networked environment forced a sea change in Library and Information Science (LIS) education. Most LIS programs offer a mixed-mode of instruction that integrates online learning materials with more traditional classroom pedagogical methods and faculty are now responsible for developing content and digital learning objects. The teaching commons…

This guide provides recommendations for collecting accurate, comparable, and useful data about virtual education in an elementary/secondary education setting. Its goals are to: (1) identify components common to many education information systems that are necessary to meet the information needs of policymakers, administrators, instructors, and…

The main focus of current discussions within the standardization process of learning technology is on economical opportunities and technical aspects of learning objects. There has been little discussion about the instructional or didactical issues. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a taxonomy of learning objects for the facilitation of…

Recent developments of e-learning specifications such as Learning Object Metadata (LOM), Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), Learning Design and other pedagogy research in semantic e-learning have shown a trend of applying innovative computational techniques, especially Semantic Web technologies, to promote existing content-focused…

This paper reviews indexing theory and suggests that information retrieval can be significantly improved by applying basic indexing criteria. Indexing practices are described, including the three main types of indexes: pre-coordinate, post-coordinate, and variants of both. Design features of indexes are summarized, including accuracy, consistency,…

One of the "hottest" topics in recent information systems and computer science is metadata. Learning Object Metadata (LOM) appears to be a very powerful mechanism for representing metadata, because of the great variety of LOM Objects. This is on of the reasons why the LOM standard is repeatedly cited in projects in the field of eLearning…

Describes the ARIADNE (Alliance of Remote Instructional Authoring and Distribution Networks for Europe) projects (1996-2000), which developed tools and methodologies for producing and managing pedagogical elements, storing them in knowledge pools and building and supporting training curricula. Collaborative teaching with ARIADNE is highlighted,…

Educational institutions across the country are adopting guidelines to help assure the quality of e-learning programs and courses. Corporations are also adopting guidelines, but their focus is on the interoperability and reusability of learning objects. While there are commonalities, there are also significant differences between how education and…

IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) is a promising technology aimed at supporting learning processes. IMS-LD packages contain the learning process metadata as well as the learning resources. However, the allocation of resources--whether data or services--within the learning design is done manually at design-time on the basis of the subjective appraisals…

Ideally, learning resources should be built over a shared pool of fine reusable granular learning objects. However, in order to avoid contextual lacks, dynamic creation of such resources would mostly rely on the conceptual relationships among learning objects inside a repository. These conceptual relationships, as well as the learning objects…

Useful lifetime of educational materials should be defined by their continuing ability to help meet defined learning objectives. More often lifetime is compromised by changes in the educational environment that do not specifically relate to the capacity of the material to assist learning. Approaches for integration of materials into the learning…

This paper investigates a solution to support the learning of cognitively complex concepts, through the recording, annotation and online delivery of multimedia lessons. Recording lessons for online delivery has the advantage of utilizing all of the pedagogical skills of the lecturers and teachers involved. To facilitate the retrieval of…

Educational intermediaries are information systems that support the exchange of learning resources among dispersed users. The selection of the appropriate learning resources that cover specific educational needs requires a concise interaction between the user and system. This paper describes a data mining process for the discovery of ontologies…

A learning resource catalogue (currently LRC3) that comprises records of learning objects has been used by members of the Universitas 21 Consortium for three years. Five conceptually useful classes of learning objects are employed. While almost all faculty who were introduced to the LRC appreciate its value, need, and ease of use, few are willing…