Overcoming the Limitations of Learning Objects

My apology for making a quite lengthy discussion of what I've just learned. I hope it won’t cause boredom to anyone. I have to understand first what learning objects really mean. The positive aspect of reading educational articles is that it makes you want to read and research more. The study used the definition given by Wiley and Edwards, learning object is any digital resource which can be reused to mediate learning. But let me briefly share what I just learned which our moderators apparently also have found out. The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (2002) defines learning object as “(A)ny entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training.”

From my own understanding, the main idea of utilizing learning objects is to break educational content down into small chunks that can be reused in various learning environments. I find the idea of learning objects to be beneficial as an educational tool. However, it has limitations too which was addressed in the study as explained by the moderators. Its main disadvantage knowing that it is a digital resource is that it may possibly lead to an isolation-approach. Although its utilization can lead to a collection of quantity and even quality contents, it is still not enough to facilitate learning. Allow me to stress what made an impact to me from the study, “If good content were enough to support learning and human interaction were unnecessary, libraries would never have evolved into universities.” As an avid user of libraries since I was in grade school, I really find books to be very helpful whenever I study or research on any topic. I took advantage of it most especially when I entered the nursing world. And until now, some of my classmates might agree that I never ran out of books to borrow in our UERM library. Josephy Brodsky says, “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” Reading and going to libraries would not only give the facts we need to learn but more importantly, it also teaches us the value of patience and resourcefulness. This is also applicable for those who have limited or no means at all to use the internet. However, it is sad to admit that nowadays, students rely more on the digital resources we have. It only brings us back to the importance of the role of the educators in motivating and molding their students.

The O2 model tried to address the limitations of learning objects. Learning objects were selected and made available to the students by course designers in order to support the accomplishment of project tasks and goals. Also because the learning objects used in the O2 model are highly decontextualized, it is not only easily reusable to support different projects in different courses moreover, it provides the learners motivation for studying. In relation to our MSN/MAN course, although at first I had difficulty coping up with our online classes (I even thought it was impossible to carry out), I now appreciate its purpose and surprisingly, I realize that YES it really teaches us certain values. Not only are we motivated to learn and participate in the forums we have, it also teaches us the importance of collaboration and cooperative learning. With the previous subjects we have already taken, I can say that the Executive program in particular provides its students immediate opportunities to practice the knowledge and skills they’ve learned from the formal classes and apply it to their online classes after.

IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC). (2002). Draft Standard for Learning Object Metadata. Retrieved August 14, 2008 from http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/files/LOM_1484_12_1_v1_Final_Draft.pdf

Let me start with the quotation made by Wertsch (1991), "Only by being part of the action do mediational means come into being and play their role. They have no magical power on and of themselves".

The way i understand in the article given is that learning object is a resource that can be reused to further enhanced and mediate learning. It also serves as a tool and guidance to direct the learners to be more effective and efficient and to acquire the motivation for learning. Any digital, or non - digital form of information may be used for training and learning as defined by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

The article cited several limitations and disadvantages wherein it plays a big role for the learner to reuse the same information or material with the same content and preserving its value. It emphasizes on the the importance of collaboration and cooperative learning - which are the raised solution to the issues addressed. I find the learning object as a very beneficial tool for us educators. It is by breaking down or simplifying them into small content to which we can utilize easily and can be adoopt to various environments while upholding its value. However, to utilize the learning object and to facilitate learning, collection of quality content is not sufficient, it needs to be congruence with human interaction to support learning.

In relation to the executive track, i ifnd it difficult to absorb all of the information at once but i ifnd it very interesting because i was able to challenge myself to exert more effort and motivate myself more to learn. Not only i and we can gain a lot of experience from this, it teaches us on our values and belief in life, to be more patient and be resourceful. It molds us to be an effective and efficient in the future by collaborating with our own colleagues. Indeed, in the MSN/MAN executive program, we are all equal, though we have our own specialty's on our fileds but in terms of learning, we are all equal and at the same time, influencing each other to learn more. From what i understood from the learning objects perspective, through combination or sequencing of educational resources, it creates a context in which we absorb each other's meanings and provide opportunities to practice the knowledge and skills that we gained from the executive program.

The O2 model did not only addressed the issues but provided solutions and opportunity for improvement to further facilitate learning. In order to support the accomplished projects of task and goals of the O2 model, it was influenced by other models that describes the relationships and the components of learning objects from the definition of wiley and edwards (2002), that learning object is any digital resource that can ve reused to mediate learning. In other words, in the O2 model, learning object acts only as mediators. Some advantages of learning object is that it teaches only one topic, though it may violate the designs for reuse, it is centered on the solution of problems to gain the ability to complete intermediate milestones.

As we can see, in the new era of education, learning objects are a mediator for a technology base source of information that library is now becoming obsolete. sad to say but the students see it as a more reliable and accurate source of information. But we need to go back to the traditional methods where we can assess ourself to be more effective educator in a way we can influence our students to learn more.

The way I understand it, learning objects are created to make learning easier but it is inevitable for the face educators to encounter problems using them. The good side of utilizing learning object is, it facilitates breakdown of the teaching content into smaller units, self-contained, and most of the time can be re-used.


I found myself wanting more to read about the “learning objects” so I did extra reading using the net. I found lots of sites and interactive means to understand it fully. After several minutes I realized that I am using the “learning objects” to meet my cravings for knowledge!


On the contrary, I know that facing the computer for hours will not suffice learning, thus a good interaction will augment and foster better knowledge. That is the reason why our online class was created, for us to communicate and interact.

Gone are the days of scarcity of books and educational materials and now is the moment where knowledge is encapsulated.

If learning objects is to be construed as, content objects, strategy objects….content chunks or information containers readily available one click away, then what kind of knowledge content does it bear? Does it address quality education? Are ethical standards and values being embedded in the learning objects? What competencies of students does it aim to acquire? If automation aims to provide logical topic sequencing, does it discard the need of classroom lecturer?

My ignorance to the real issue or meaning and purpose of the articles limit me to comment further. My apology

If to facilitate learning is the objective, is the quality of education being preserved? Does it aim to address all types of learner or different capabilities and learning styles of students were considered?

Kriselda Manzano wrote:

The way I understand it, learning objects are created to make learning easier but it is inevitable for the face educators to encounter problems using them. The good side of utilizing learning object is, it facilitates breakdown of the teaching content into smaller units, self-contained, and most of the time can be re-used. I found myself wanting more to read about the “learning objects” so I did extra reading using the net. I found lots of sites and interactive means to understand it fully. After several minutes I realized that I am using the “learning objects” to meet my cravings for knowledge! On the contrary, I know that facing the computer for hours will not suffice learning, thus a good interaction will augment and foster better knowledge. That is the reason why our online class was created, for us to communicate and interact.

Hello Kriselda! Truly, no matter how many sites and articles we try to read about a particular subject matter, it will not suffice a comprehensive learning. Hence, cooperative and interactive learning such as the approach we are using in our class will lead to a higher individual and group achievement. It also provides us with more new ideas and even solutions to existing problems. In addition, I’ve read from the Encyclopedia of Educational Technology that compared to individual or competitive work, students working in cooperative groups tend to be more intrinsically motivated, intellectually curious, caring of others, and psychologically healthy.

Baylon, C. (2005). Cooperative learning. In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved August 14, 2008, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/coopgroups/start.htm

Kriselda Manzano wrote:

I found myself wanting more to read about the “learning objects” so I did extra reading using the net. I found lots of sites and interactive means to understand it fully. After several minutes I realized that I am using the “learning objects” to meet my cravings for knowledge! On the contrary, I know that facing the computer for hours will not suffice learning, thus a good interaction will augment and foster better knowledge. That is the reason why our online class was created, for us to communicate and interact.

A learning object is "any digital resource that can be reused to support learning" (wiley, 2004).The main idea of 'learning objects' is to break educational content down into small chunks that can be reused in various learning environments, in the spirit of object-oriented programming.The only problem being encountered in using learning object is decontextualization.

This paper taught me that being an educator we should learn on how to overcome the limitations of learning objects in order to facilitate learning. I also learned the different issues facing learning objects in which we should be knowledgeable of.

I will always remember this context which tells that the less specific the the internal context of the learning object, the more instructional concept it will fit and vice versa. But is we remove as much contex from the learning object can be problematic becuase it will lose the meaningful context of learning.

Having a content is not the only aspect as we use learning objects, cooperative learning and interaction is very important. Eventhough learning object are used commonly in the world wide web, interplay among learners is still important to facilitate proper learning.
Another problem that should be taken into consideration is that learning objects should not only be a communication with the learner and the material to be studied, discourse and dialogue between learners should be considered also.

I thinnk just like in our forum we arer using the learning objects properly, because first we interact with the material that we should read and then have a dialogue with our classmates using this forum. Through this we are learning alot and information is varied. Through this learning object we discuss things one at a time for us to prevent decontextualization.

Yes, the main objective of the learning object is to facilitate learning. But by doing so, it needs to be influential to the students, for them to be more motivated. Quality of education is one issue that needs to be conveyed. Reusing such information or materials may endanger the quality of the content through the web based system.but as an educator, for me, is to uphold the values of each learning object. Its only act as a mediator to facilitate learning. I beleived we can consider each students learning style through the learning object by collaboration and cooperative learning.

Josh wrote:

If to facilitate learning is the objective, is the quality of education being preserved? Does it aim to address all types of learner or different capabilities and learning styles of students were considered? Kriselda Manzano wrote: The way I understand it, learning objects are created to make learning easier but it is inevitable for the face educators to encounter problems using them. The good side of utilizing learning object is, it facilitates breakdown of the teaching content into smaller units, self-contained, and most of the time can be re-used. I found myself wanting more to read about the “learning objects” so I did extra reading using the net. I found lots of sites and interactive means to understand it fully. After several minutes I realized that I am using the “learning objects” to meet my cravings for knowledge! On the contrary, I know that facing the computer for hours will not suffice learning, thus a good interaction will augment and foster better knowledge. That is the reason why our online class was created, for us to communicate and interact.

As defined, learning object is a resource that is readily available, and can be used and re-used to support learning. It doesn’t necessarily have to bear the entire information. As I understand it, a learning object is basically a “summary” or “keywords” of information. You still have to do extensive reading and research, maybe the traditional way, if you want to obtain a more comprehensive work.

Josh wrote:

Gone are the days of scarcity of books and educational materials and now is the moment where knowledge is encapsulated. If learning objects is to be construed as, content objects, strategy objects….content chunks or information containers readily available one click away, then what kind of knowledge content does it bear? Does it address quality education? Are ethical standards and values being embedded in the learning objects? What competencies of students does it aim to acquire? If automation aims to provide logical topic sequencing, does it discard the need of classroom lecturer? My ignorance to the real issue or meaning and purpose of the articles limit me to comment further. My apology

students are like sheep, who needs a shepherd to lead its way to the meadows and the shepherd is the guiding light when the sheep will be gone astray.
No matter how rich accesible knowledge we get from web-based learning center, we still need each other to enrich what we learn and we also need a teacher who will lead us to the right direction when time comes knowledge seem to be in the dark

Divinia Joy Tuzon wrote:

Hello Kriselda! Truly, no matter how many sites and articles we try to read about a particular subject matter, it will not suffice a comprehensive learning. Hence, cooperative and interactive learning such as the approach we are using in our class will lead to a higher individual and group achievement. It also provides us with more new ideas and even solutions to existing problems. In addition, I’ve read from the Encyclopedia of Educational Technology that compared to individual or competitive work, students working in cooperative groups tend to be more intrinsically motivated, intellectually curious, caring of others, and psychologically healthy. Baylon, C. (2005). Cooperative learning. In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved August 14, 2008, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/coopgroups/start.htm Kriselda Manzano wrote: I found myself wanting more to read about the “learning objects” so I did extra reading using the net. I found lots of sites and interactive means to understand it fully. After several minutes I realized that I am using the “learning objects” to meet my cravings for knowledge! On the contrary, I know that facing the computer for hours will not suffice learning, thus a good interaction will augment and foster better knowledge. That is the reason why our online class was created, for us to communicate and interact.

admitedly the article assigned to us was quite technical and complex in the choice of the author's words. but if you noticed 3 out of the 4 guide questions, you need not read the article as the questions we posed are analytical and based on experience. it is therefore your prerogative whether or not any of you want to reply. --- MODERATORS

Josh wrote:

Gone are the days of scarcity of books and educational materials and now is the moment where knowledge is encapsulated. If learning objects is to be construed as, content objects, strategy objects….content chunks or information containers readily available one click away, then what kind of knowledge content does it bear? Does it address quality education? Are ethical standards and values being embedded in the learning objects? What competencies of students does it aim to acquire? If automation aims to provide logical topic sequencing, does it discard the need of classroom lecturer? My ignorance to the real issue or meaning and purpose of the articles limit me to comment further. My apology