2. Mission
to support the faculty and staff of all public
higher education institutions in the State of
Texas by providing a central location for the
collection and dissemination of high-quality
digital learning objects and assets.
3. Learning Assets
“any digital resource that can be reused during
learning”
Word documents
Images
Movies
4. Examples of Assets
Carbohydrate group
Carbohydrates are an ideal source of energy for the body. This is because they can
be transformed quicker into glucose, the form of sugar that's transported and used
by the body, than can be proteins or fats. Even so, a diet too high in carbohydrates
can upset the delicate balance of a body's blood sugar level, resulting in fluctuations
in energy and mood that leave one feeling irritated and tired.
Vegetable group
A vegetable is a part of a plant consumed by humans that is generally savory (not
sweet) and not considered a grain, fruit, nut, spice, or herb. For example, the stem,
root, flower, etc., may be eaten as vegetables. Vegetables contain many vitamins
and minerals; however, different vegetables contain different spreads, so it is
important to eat a wide variety of types. For example, green vegetables typically
contain vitamin A, dark orange and dark green vegetables contain vitamin C,and
vegetables like broccoli and related plants contain iron and calcium. Vegetables are
very low in fats and calories, but cooking can often add these.
2-3 servings of vegetables in a day. They may be fresh, frozen, canned, or juiced.
Fruit group
In terms of food (rather than botany), fruits are the sweet-tasting seed-bearing
parts of plants, or occasionally sweet parts of plants which do not bear seeds. These
include apples, oranges, plums, bananas, etc. Fruits are low in calories and fat and
are a source of natural sugars, fiber and vitamins. Processing fruits when canning or
making into juices unfortunately may add sugars and remove nutrients. The fruit
food group is sometimes combined with the vegetable food group. Note that many
foods considered fruits in botany because they bear seeds are not considered fruits
in cuisine because they lack the characteristic sweet taste, e.g., tomatoes or
avocados. It is best to consume 2-4 servings of fruit in a day. They may be fresh,
frozen, canned, dried, pureed or juiced.
5. Learning Objects
“any digital resource that can be reused and
supports learning by providing
content,
practice, and
assessment which is
classified and linked to educational
objectives”
7. A Question of Size
Files Courses
[assets] LO’s [collections]
Often Seldom
Reusable
reusable reusable
Reusability
Context
Little Some Large
context context context
8. Why should you care?
It’s how faculty create instruction
deconstruct
replace/add
contextualize
sequence
9. Why should you participate?
digital content is easy
multimedia content is hard
10. Mission
to support the faculty and staff of all public
higher education institutions in the State of
Texas by providing a central location for the
collection and dissemination of high-quality
collection dissemination of high-quality
digital learning objects and assets.
11. Workflow & Repository
Using a combination of open source software
and web development frameworks we are able
to provide a full cycle of object submission,
approval (or rejection), and delivery.
Input side Output side
Grails DSpace
Editor's Notes
TxLOR: imaginative stories about Texas? No. But an interesting story nonetheless. TxLOR is a project jointly funded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the University of Texas System Office of Health Affairs, the TxLOR is currently managed by the department formerly known as the UT TeleCampus in partnership with the Texas Digital Library (TDL) and the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio. Based in part on the successful pilot led by Dr. Bill Moen at the University of North Texas, TxLOR will serve two distinct but complementary audiences: academic and medical.
The mission of TxLOR is simple: provide a central location for all public higher education institutions in Texas to collect and distribute digital learning content. Notice the distinction in the last line between objects and assets. Let’s define those terms because they’re the fundamental distinction in TxLOR content.
An asset is any digital resource that can be reused. That broad definition includes Word documents available on the Web, images, movies, sound clips—basically anything that could be utilized by a faculty member during instruction.
When you’re talking about assets, you’re talking about self-contained files or chunks of information. For example, we have a photograph of the USDA’s food pyramid in our repository. This image could be used in a nutrition class, a social problems class, or even a math class. We also have a text description of the food pyramid in our repository, a description which could also be used to discuss nutrition, social problems, or math. Each asset alone has value, but to provide learning, you have to combine assets. By themselves, assets offer a LOT of flexibility for reuse—but most students would have difficulty learning anything from a single asset.
So along come learning objects—collections of assets. But not just any old collection—a collection that provides a learning possibility. As one group of developers succinctly put it, "If everything is a learning object, nothing is.” And so we turn to pedagogy instead of software and arrive at this definition proposed by David Wiley, David Merrill, and others and adopted by the Southern Regional Education Board which has been at the forefront of learning object advocacy. Learning objects support learning by providinga learning event. Something happens, and that something occurs in the form of feedback to the learner.Now what are these four components I pulled out in the bulleted list? content is the assets we combined to teach an educational objective practice are examples and exercises that contextualize that content assessment is feedback to the learner to provide self-evidence that the objective has been moved from short-term to long-term memory and classification is the description of the learning object via metadata that facilitates discovery by others
Let’s look at a couple of examples of learning objects. Here’s one on nutrition from Finland. Behind the scenes is the information from the food pyramid assets, but the learning object brings that information to life in a healthy meal simulation that provides feedback. Here’s another from the medical community—a learning object in emergency room psychiatry created by the TeleCampus for UT Southwestern. Behind the scenes are video and textual assets that make up the case, but the learning object situates that information in a realistic approach where residents gather patient history, order tests, and ultimately make a diagnosis and recommend treatment and receive feedback.Now these simulations may look too complicated to produce easily, so let’s use a more straightforward example. In fact, let’s use a physical model. [Zip-lock demo]
By now, hopefully I’ve convinced you that learning objects are worth considering. So let’s take the TxLOR system for a test drive. First, remember our mission statement: provide a centralized service for the collection and dissemination of digital learning content. Note the two highlighted words—collection and dissemination: they succinctly define the two sides of TxLOR. We have to have a way to put content into the repository, and we have to have a way to get content out of the repository.
Those two requirements define the two software applications that make up TxLOR: workflow and repository, or what I have creatively called the input and output sides.On the input side, we are writing a workflow engine based on Grails, an open source web development language. Each public college and university in Texas will be able to design one or more custom workflows that meet their institution al needs. Some will need a single-step approval; some will require extensive peer review boards before learning objects are published with the institution’s name.On the output side, we are customizing an open source repository application called DSpace which was developed at MIT, is currently supported by a large user community, and has already been implemented to run learning object repositories all over the world, including MIT’s own Open CourseWare project.
