Ocotillo Retreat 2002
History and Definition of Reusable Learning Objects
From "Reusable Learning Objects- What does the future hold?"
by Peter Jacobsen, e-learning Magazine, November 1, 2002
http://www.ltimagazine.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=5043
 History and Definition of Reusable Learning Objects
This document is also available as an Adobe Arcobat file: rlos.pdf [3ok]
RLO (are-el-oh): "A discrete reusable collection of content used to present and support a single learning objective."
Many RLO definitions exist, but there is a consensus emerging around the concept of reusing chunks of instructional content. The multimedia industry struggled with a definition for years before the need for a formal definition faded as the industry understood the concept, which was more important than the definition.
The history of RLOs is a little easier to document than a formal definition. The term "learning object" began nearly 10 years ago. It's difficult to pin down exactly who coined the term "learning object" and when, but widespread credit is given to Wayne Hodgins, a learning and informant futurist at AutoDesk.
In 1992, Wayne was watching one of his children playing with Lego building blocks while mulling over some problems regarding learning strategies. Wayne realized right there that the industry needed building blocks for learning-plug-and-play interoperable pieces of learning. He termed those building blocks, "learning objects."
In the 1992-1995 time frame, several disparate groups started working with the early concept of learning objects. The Learning Object Metadata Group from the National Institute of Science and Technology and CEDMA were wrestling with learning object issues, including modularity, database centricity and tagging objects with what we now call metadata. These groups and those like them were raising awareness and flagging issues for future consideration.
From about 1994-1996, several other groups jumped into the fray. The IEEE, IMS, and ARIADNE (in Europe) either formed or started work in the learning object arena. At this time, Oracle emerged early and realized learning objects were critical to their future learning strategy. Oracle did some early thinking in the 1994-95 time frame that later developed into the Oracle Learning Application (OLA). OLA was an early attempt at an authoring environment using learning objects.
Although OLA never came to fruition at Oracle, Tom Kelly and Chuck Barritt moved to Cisco Systems and continued their learning object work, which culminated with the release of Cisco's white paper on Reusable Learning Objects in 1998. That paper, in conjunction with the work of the industry standards and specifications bodies, did much to move RLOs to the forefront industry-wide by 2000-2001.
More instructional debate will continue. For example, we haven't resolved the tension between including context for effective instruction and excluding it to ensure maximum reuse of the object. Object granularity will be largely solved as best practices emerge.
The problem of how to design so content can be used in different instructional mediums will rise to prominence as delivery technology enables delivery to Web, CD, paper, and WAP. The battle on how to best design for multiple mediums will be waged-but not won in the near term.
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