Content creation and management (ii)

Three weeks ago our first instalment on this Becta Seminar talked about national strategy, quality assurance and developing an easy framework within which ownership and origination may be protected.  Sorry part (ii) is late: three eLearning courses going strong via Connected Community Learning (CCL) involve active facilitation and, in the case of the new course, final composition as the class moves forward.  All time-consuming.  But the delay brings a bonus: Becta has now published the conference proceedings. You may not want to spend a day listening to it all, but do see how lectures can now be published: PowerPoint slides as a pdf; slides + full audio as a Flash movie; a complete transcript (produced, one imagines, by 'old' technology); or an MP3 of the sound track. Follow this link.  Herewith instalment (ii), mostly on being able to use and reuse resources no matter what learning platform (software) you're running.  This would be a key issue for the church if a national / modular / ecumenical approach to eLearning were to be taken.

CCL's platform (Pioneer) was developed by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) years before comparable products became available, so I listened with interest to LTS’ Gerry Graham on “The scissors, Pritt stick and paper approach to digital content creation”.  Simple idea: teachers do all sorts of things with other people's paper-based content - how can we make the same possible with digital content?

We will hear much more of SCORM - guidelines for interfacing and cataloguing learning objects.  Today, Gerry Graham reminded us that SCORM includes RAID - objects should be Reusable, Accessible, Interoperable and Discoverable.  Think of a ‘learning object’ as an ‘atom’ of learning material, the smallest unit into which you would want to split learning content - it should be possible to bolt together objects in different collections to create courses for different purposes.  In a new course on bereavement, for example, I've just reused several web pages originally written for a course on the Christian Hope.  That's Reusability.  Accessibility is, for example, text being resizable (by the visually impaired) or able to be output as sound using reading software (for the blind). Interoperable means that digital learning material should ‘run’ on any learning platform.  Easy concept: a parallel is ensuring that all word processor documents open in any word processor (Word, Works, Word Perfect, …).  Finally, Discoverable means being able to find learning objects (anywhere in the world) by means of an agreed cataloguing and search system.

The final presenter discussed Becta's Learning Platform Conformance Regime and the recent publication of Content Interoperability: Packaging and Publishing Best Practice Guidelines. This is the product of a working group of representatives from the eLearning software industry and is the emergent standard for work in this area.  To download the document, follow this link.  Finally, you may be interested in a new leaflet on learning platforms; download here.

Yours in Christ,

Peter Nicholls

PS Please note the job opportunity offered at Bawtry Hall, which we have been asked to publicise by Mike Frith, who takes this eLearning newsletter.