Invited Commentary on Reusing Online Resources, Chapter 17: A Comparison of Issues in Reuse of Resources in Schools and Colleges, by Allison Littlejohn, Insung Jung and Liz Broumley.

Abstract

This chapter forces us to confront an issue that has long haunted education technology focused reformers ? what if we build it and nobody comes? Will learning objects end up alongside programmed learning machines, educational television, and video conferencing as technologies that were cool in their day, but never had anywhere near the impact on formal education that was predicted by early proponents. Perhaps the best way to ensure valued and valuable use of any technology is to ensure that lessons learned from early implementations are recycled back into design of subsequent products. Fortunately, we are yet in early times in the development of objects and thus the potential for both incremental and substantive change to the way we design and use these latest techniques is great. As importantly, the design and construction processes related to educational objects use and adoption are much different than the monolithic models of earlier technologies. Educational objects promise a flexibility of design and implementation that allows for and even demands creative input from both professional designers and practicing teachers. Thus, articles such as this one by Littlejohn, Jung and Broumley that not only document issues and concerns of early adopters but further provide new design models and heuristics are especially valuable.