Next Steps???
Funding Agencies/Foundations
Agencies and foundations that provide
financial support to scholars should
require that the projects they support be
listed on sites like Merlot
(http://www.merlot.org), which collects
links to online learning materials. Even
better, the agencies could establish
programs that encourage faculty members
in a given discipline to create learning
materials for their curricula.
Professional Societies
Professional societies could encourage their
members to present and document
innovative uses of electronic materials,
and create ways to evaluate those uses.
Listing what exists within a discipline
would be very helpful; equally important
would be a list of what's missing. Societies
should ask their members to record their
projects and their uses of other people's
materials in discipline-based repositories.
Provosts and Academic
Administrators
Provosts and other academic administrators
could think about how their institutions
reward innovation. Is the production of
innovative scholarship and educational
materials rewarded in promotion and
tenure processes? Are IT staffing,
budgets, and resources seen as critical
components of teaching and scholarship,
and not simply as administrative tools?
Librarians
Librarians could work with faculty members
to find out what digital educational
materials are already available in their
fields, and to help professors use them.
Technologists
Technology experts should adopt state-of-
the-art practices when working on new
projects with faculty members. It is
important to adhere to standards that will
allow materials to remain usable as
underlying technologies change. A good
place to start is the New Media
Consortium's learning-object guidelines
(see http://www.nmc.org/guidelines).
Content Developers
Content developers should be explicit about
the conditions under which they will allow
others to use and modify their materials.
With a license from Creative Commons
(http://www.creativecommons.org), a
developer can grant various levels of
permission so a user doesn't need to
make a specific request.
Publishers
Publishers could offer licenses to online
materials separately from textbooks or
other less-flexible products.
Educational Researchers
Educational researchers could study the
pedagogical benefits of teaching with
learning objects and other digital
materials, and publish their findings where
faculty members will read them -- in
disciplinary journals, not journals of
pedagogy.
Next Steps: Communities of
Practice
– NMC http://www.nmc.org
– Merlot http://www.merlot.org
– NLII http://www.educause.edu/nlii/
– Academic Commons
• Mailing lists
http://lists.academiccommons.org/mailman/listinf
o/learningobjects-l
• Lola http://www.lolaexchange.org
• Works-in-progress and Developer’s kit
http://www.academiccommons.org/index.php?pa
ge=developerskit
Next Steps: Communities of
Practice
– NMC http://www.nmc.org
– Merlot http://www.merlot.org
– NLII http://www.educause.edu/nlii/
– MANE IT Leaders Blog
http://blogs.cet.middlebury.edu/mane/
– Academic Commons
• Mailing lists
http://lists.academiccommons.org/mailman/listinfo/learning
objects-l
• Lola http://www.lolaexchange.org
• Works-in-progress and Developer’s kit
http://www.academiccommons.org/index.php?page=devel
operskit