Collaboration through a Learning Management System for multiple Learning Object Creation

Cooperative Learnware Object Exchange (CLOE)

CLOE Manager Peter Goldsworthy ( Waterloo University)

Started 200-1

Repository in Ontario see http://cloe.on.ca/

National members, CLOE is very community organization.

CLOE has found that if one Institute creates a LO there is little opportunity of reuse. However if there is collaborative development that at least 2 Institutions involved in the development of LOs there is increased opportunity for re-use.

In 2005 Inukshuk (Inuit word describing an Inuit stone symbol for welcome) however, Inukshuk in this instance is referring to a vendor/company responsible for BB provision. The Canadian Federal Government funded their BB project with the understanding that they would fund educational projects for LO development. This was the same model Canarie and Cancore were funded on in the early 2000’s for similar BB and other educational technology projects.

Once the project was granted to CLOE they established timelines and policy. One policy was that the funding was contingent on there being a QA process which led to all LO’s being peer reviewed as a QA. This demanded that the peer review only recommend when a LO was suitable both pedagogically and technically sound.

The project management and work flow work tool was created in the University of Waterloo LMS (using Angel as an LMS the LO repository is Desire2Learn), in which they created a team discussion areas, team file areas, Gannt Chart showing time lines and milestones. They also created a Wiki . The site did not work so well for staff initially. Seem to have heard this somewhere else. Some analysis indicated that the work load both in the project and their day job was high so this had an impact. However, after some redesign minimizing the complexity and renaming some functions there seems to be increased uptake. Both students and staff were involved in the LO development project. The students had less inhibition in using the project technology.

From Peter’s perspective the work space was so vital at reporting time as most of the learning and outcomes had been captured. There was toward the end of the project an Industrial Relations issue on campus which led to academic staff striking. This impacted on the project outputs.

In the resources section there is documentation on Evaluation and Testing to ensure the LO had a positive learning impact. This is viewable at the CLOE web site.

CLOE is currently holding approximately 200 LOs’ if I heard right. The majority of these are Flash files.