Reusable learning (RL)
Those who are interested in reuse and re purposing of learning materials see the advantages of learning objects as part of the change process1 in website evaluations and actual teaching models of the AP owner. Moving away from teaching as being about content toward seeing learning as a process to facilitate and support. The first priority is to separate the elements involved in the process (web page construction) from the content itself. Sounds like something you have read concerning CSS, is it not?
The process elements in web design from the standpoint of an AP owner are usually contained in a portion of the AP criteria. Another portion may consist of the content elements. So the first consideration would be a physical separation, if not already accomplished.
As we develop our RL's, we also develop an ever-expanding understanding of the concept of re usability. Initially, we anticipate re usability across levels of proficiency, and across modes of delivery (RSS, honorees as examples, adherence to specific membership requirements and so forth). However, the more we explore and discuss, the more dimensions of re usability emerge. Reuse over and again by the same AP owner or AP applicant in order to practice and master something; reuse of the same material in order to draw out and support different points and themes; reuse that involved a modification of the original material as well as reuse that didn’t. In this process we become increasingly aware that even the concept of re usability itself is fluid. 2
Several examples immediately come to mind. Like a snippet of code which brother Akio took as a base, modified and then expanded for almost unlimited re usability. Another is when Rhonda took an excellent WA criteria and tendered an equally excellent linear criteria rubric, which follows skill progression.
We realize that the degree of re usability, if the option of subsequent users changing anything within an individual RL is excluded, relates primarily to the anticipated 'closeness' to the material. In other words, the more the content itself is focused on as knowledge to be transmitted, the less reusable a RL becomes and the smaller it needed to be. The distinction between teaching materials and teaching resources becomes important at this point.
As collaborating colleagues, this will eventually led us respectively to prioritize different dimensions of ‘RL-ness’ that had less to do with re usability and more to do with the nature of the added electronic value. Nonetheless, embedded within our consciousness are questions of content, its presentation and consequent possibilities of reuse, together with the fact that heightened accessibility of material purely on account of its being available electronically contributes to a RL’s re usability.3
Footnotes:
2The National Academies Press.
3National Center on Disability and Access to Education.