Friday, May 14, 2010

Reuse of Educational Objects

This week we looked at the Reusability Paradox. Basically this paradox explains that educational resources become more valuable pedagogically the more context they have, but the greater the context the less it is possible to reuse those resources. The greater the context surrounding an object the less likely it is to use that object in another context.

I looked one evening at three institutions who offer open content for courses to see how the content was being reused. I searched using a backwards link search in Google's advanced search function. The institutions I looked at were Capliano College (Canada), UC Berkley (USA), and The Open University (UK). I looked at a variety of different courses offered.

The most common form of reuse I found was a simple listing on a resource based webpage. For example, I searched some art courses at Caplilano and found this page listing many online art courses for free. I found one course which had a specific recommendation on a blog for a webclass offered at UC Berkley. I had an interesting find which I am not sure would count as reuse. When doing a link back for a course offered through The Open University I found a link to an article written in the OU's newsletter with an add linking back to the course I was searching. I thought this was a nice form of advertising. The topic of the article related to the course offered. Is this reuses though?

All in all my results were fairly disappointing. I really thought I would find more examples, especially recommendations on blogs.

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