e-Learning Nudism: Stripping Context from Content

Educational economics plays an increasing role in university development. In order to attract students well developed curricula are needed and they are expected to contain a fair amount of digital resources, which are much more expensive to create than sheets of paper in the old days. The flip side is: they can be sold. Whereas hand-outs remained an obscure asset, suitably organized electronic courseware promises to become a major business. As "Learning Management Systems" offer comprehensive services to entire universities at substantial costs, university administrators try to channel traditional teaching into new formats, hoping to serve more students at lesser expense. One catchword, capturing those concerns, is "learning object". A learning object is the equivalent of a chunk of beef, registered according to some classificatory scheme, marked by a stamp of approval by some authority, deep-frozen and waiting for delivery. Here is a more respectable description. Learning objects are digital entities designed to be used (and re-used) in learning activities.[1] They are supposed to be independent of specific educational settings, disengaged from more comprehensive courses. Information pertaining to their educational, technical and legal status is to be captured by meta-data accompanying the objects. Learning object repositories (LORs) collect those molecular units and offer facilities for search and peer evaluation.