Design and Reusability of Learning Objects in an Academic Context: a new Economy of Education?

Open Access

Any provider of learning materials may prepare and distribute learning materials through DLORN. Though DLORN will support the registration and indexing of various providers, this registration will be free and optional. The purpose of this principle is to ensure that providers are not faced with a priori ‘membership fees’ or similar tariffs in order to gain access to potential purchasers. This does not preclude restrictions, tariffs or controls on specific instances of a DLORN component. However, in any case where a restricted component, such as a for-profit metadata repository, exists, an equivalent unrestricted component, such as a public metadata repository, will also exist.

Open Market

There will be no prior restraint imposed on the distribution model selected by participants in DLORN. Specifically, DLORN will accommodate free content distribution, co-op or shared content distribution, and commercial fee-based content distribution. The purpose of this principle is to ensure fair and open competition between different types of business models, to ensure that users of DLORN are not ‘locked in’ to the offerings provided by certain vendors, to provide the widest possible range of content options, and to ensure that prices charged for learning content most accurately reflect the true market value of that content.

Standards Tolerance

DLORN imposes no prior restraint on the metadata standards used by participants to describe given resources or services. Metadata repositories are tolerant of different standards employed by different providers of learning materials. Metadata repositories also (attempt to) provide output in the standard requested by users of the system. This means, for example, that a vendor may elect to employ IEEE-LOM to describe its learning materials, while a consumer may request information in the form of the CanCore profile. Standards tolerance extends to the description of digital rights, classification and taxonomies, and evaluation and annotation. The purpose of this principle is to enable an inclusive marketplace, to reduce risk by vendors when metadata standards are selected, and to enable the development of vendor-specific or custom metadata for particular uses.

Multiple Channels

The description of DLORN will include descriptions for communication using multiple channels or multiple modes of communication. For example, DLORN will enable requests using web services such as XML-RPC or SOAP, gateway interfaces such as HTTP-POST, and harvesting protocols such as OAI. The purpose of this provision is to enable redundancy in the system. It is also to reduce the liability of the network should any given standard become a royalty-based standard. It is also to provide software developers the greatest range of options for the creation of new services.

Multi-Party Metadata

Multiple parties may provide metadata describing a given learning resource. There is no prior restraint exercised by providers of learning materials on evaluations, appraisals, comments and other fair descriptions of their learning material. The purpose of third party metadata may be to provide alternative classification schemes, to indicate certification compliance, or to provide independent assessments and evaluations of learning resources. The purpose of this principle is to ensure that potential users of learning resources to obtain neutral descriptions of that material. It is also to create an environment for the creation of optional but value-added third party services for which fees or other costs may be charged.

Integration with the Semantic Web

DLORN should be considered as an implementation of and an extension of the semantic web. This means that DLORN metadata data and services would be available to the semantic web as a whole. It also means that DLORN can and should incorporate elements of the semantic web, such as sector-specific ontologies, into its own design. The purpose of this principle is to ensure that DLORN is capable of the widest reach possible. It is also to reduce the duplication of effort between developers working in specific domains and educators working in the same domain.

Multiple Data Types

No prior restrictions are imposed on the data types to be transported through DLORN. This includes but is not restricted to various content formats, proprietary or otherwise, such as HTML, and the like. This provision is also intended to allow learning resources that are not learning objects, as variously defined, to circulate through the system. For example, academic papers distributed through the Open Archives Initiative, news articles distributed through various vendors, conference, class or seminar registration and information may also be distributed through DLORN. The purpose of this proposal is to enable any learning resource, including in-person learning services, to be accessed, and not merely a specific subset of learning resources.

Brokered DRM

Transactions within DLORN are brokered. That is, typically, a given provider of learning materials will work with a single agent who sells to multiple purchasers, and a given user will work with a single agent who conducts transactions with multiple vendors. Vendors and users may select from any number of brokering services, so that no single transaction agent controls the network. Vendors and purchasers may act as their own agents. A vendor or purchaser may elect to employ multiple agents. Agencies acting on behalf of, say, a provincial department of education, may act as agents for a given populations, such as the students of that province. The purpose of this provision is to eliminate the need for the creation of multiple accounts, to allow users to user resources from multiple vendors, and to provide a choice of agents, and therefore a greater likelihood of trust.