ELearning Standards: Pedagogical Neutrality and Engagement

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E-Learning StandardsPedagogical Neutrality and
Engagement

• Norm Friesen
• Simon Fraser University
• norm_friesen_at_sfu.ca

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E-Learning Standards Examples

• Learning Object Metadata exchangable database
  records for digital learning teaching resources
• IMS Learning Design a framework that supports
  pedagogical diversity and innovation, while
  promoting the exchange and interoperability of
  e-learning materials.

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Rationale for Standardization

• Standards are required for E-Learning to mature
  as an industry
• Standards as instruments of reduction (Slaton
  Abbate, 2001) --reducing
• Costs
• Incompatibilities
• Complexity
• Achieve for elearning what the Internet has
  accomplished for networking

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Neutrality

• Definition of Neutrality not decided or
  pronounced as to characteristics
• Standards are to be neutral regarding
• Culture
• Media used
• Instruction
• Pedagogies
• Agnosticism not knowing about something
• Neutral not caring, but working across pedagogies

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Learning Object Metadata LOM

• 77 data elements or fields
• Applied localized through the use of
  application profiles
• These simplify and coordinate implementation by
• Reducing the number of elements to be used (to a
  core set)
• Documenting their use

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CanCore Guidelines for Element Use

• Used by dozens of projects and collections in
  Canada and globally
• Since 2001, surveying and synthesizing best
  practices internationally
• General LOM implementation http//jtc1sc36.org/do
  c/36N0871.pdf
• Terms used for one element learning resource
  type http//www.cancore.ca/en/guidelines.html

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International LOM Survey

• 2003 Survey of application profiles gt12 from
  different domains and jurisdictions included
• How use is directed
• 2004 Survey of gt2000 LOM records from 5
  different collections nations
• How use occurs

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Terms Provided in LOM Standard

• simulation
• questionnaire
• diagram
• figure
• graph
• index

• slide
• table
• exam
• experiment
• problem statement
• self-assessment
• lecture

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Terms in Application Profiles

• Heal medicine
• Multimedia/Item, Case, Quiz/Question
• ILumina undergraduate science
• Lab Exercise, Assessment, Project, Dataset
• CLEO commercial/training
• Attractor Attracts the learner's attention.
  Typically has little or no instructional intent.

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Pedagogy An Unstructured Field Allert, et al 2001

• Besides different subject matter.
• Teaching and Learning can be
• Social formation, reproduction, construction
• Collaborative
• Discursive
• Cognitive
• Situated
• embodied, distributed, evolutionary,
  problem-based, formation, reproduction

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Complexity and Neutrality in Standards

• Domains or problem spaces is complex and
  unbounded
• Complexity and ambiguous boundaries are addressed
  through scoping
• A well defined scope is able to black-box
  related complexity
• a well-developed standard can itself become a
  black box from the perspective of related
  complexity

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Unbounded Complexity

• Bruno Latour when something is black-boxed, it
  becomes naturalized accepted without being known
  in its complexity
• But there are forms of complexity that are
  unbounded
• Interpretive and associative processes
• Forms of labour, especially interdisciplinary and
  non-specialized

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From the perspective of unbounded activities

• standards can be understood as "instruments that
  encode and order labor relations" (Slaton
  Abbate, 2001) --whether this labor is physical or
  intellectual in character
• "the adoption of standards may simplify some
  aspects of a system while creating a demand for
  more skilled labor elsewhere" (Slaton Abbate,
  2001).

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Pedagogical Utility Pedagogical Engagement

• IMS Question Test Interoperability "The
  specification has been produced to allow the
  interoperability of content within assessment
  systems"
• ISO Collaborative Communication Data Model for
  the interchange of communicative and related
  information generated through the set-up and use
  of text-based, synchronous (chat) and
  a-synchronous (discussion) communication
  technologies.

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References (1/2)

• Friesen, N. (2004). Three Objections to Learning
  Objects. Online Education Using Learning Objects.
  In McGreal, R. (ed.) London Routledge. Pp.
  59-70. Draft available at http//www.learningspac
  es.org/n/papers/objections.html
• Slaton, A. Abbate, J. (2001) The Hidden Lives
  of Standards Technical Prescriptions and the
  Transformation of Work in America. In
  Technologies of Power. Allen, M.T. Hecht, G.
  (eds), Cambridge, MA MIT Press.

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References (2/2)

• IMS Learning Design http//www.imsglobal.org/learn
  ingdesign/index.html
• CanCore http//www.cancore.ca
• Latour, B. (1999). Pandoras Hope Essays on the
  Reality of Science Studies. Harvard U.P.
• Friesen, N. (2005). Metadata for Synchronous and
  Asynchronous Collaborative Learning Environments
  http//collab-tech.jtc1sc36.org/doc/SC36_WG2_N0082
  .pdf