Putting “enérgia” into it!
Over the years there have been numerous arguments about the exact definition of ‘learning objects’ - ranging from the simple notion of digital assets through to the idea of learning objects being self-contained, self-standing ‘learning entities’. In recent years discourse has shifted more towards the notion of ‘learning activities’ as the focus of attention and hence the growth in interest in the concept of the development of more formal approaches to creation of activities that is inherent in much of the learning design research. Open Educational Resources have to my mind reactivated some of the discussion about learning objects and essentially one could argue straddle learning objects and learning activities. In his keynote the other week Cantoni introduced a very nice analogy which helps distinguish between the two for me. He quoted Johnstone’s (2005) definition of OERs, which includes the phrase ‘community of users’ (figure) and argued that this community dimension of OERs was vital. Similarly Downes (2006) Downes (2006) believes that OER use could be improved most effectively through a shift from a ‘provider/user’ paradigm to a community model of collaborative development. For Cantoni the community of use and the context within which OERs are created and used is key; and I would agree with his view that OERs in themselves are simply resources, which have potential that is only unlocked in use. He compares this to W. Von Humboldt’s use of the terms ‘ergen’ and ‘enérgeia’; where the former roughly equates to ‘product’ and the latter ‘process’. In terms of OERs then the resources themselves are the ‘ergen’ but their real value lies in the process – how they are created by teachers and used by learners – this is the ‘enérgeia’. This enérgeia is a vital aspect of any design process. Our evaluation of the CompendiumLD tools shows that users see the main value of the tool is that it helps make the process of design more explicit and that it provides a vehicle for developing a shared vocabulary and understanding of the design process. The resultant product (the ‘ergen)’ of the design, such as the Compendium map showing the tasks the students are doing and any associated tools and resources, in isolation is of limited use, the value is in the associated ‘enérgia’ of shared creation and reuse, and this ‘enérgia’ is inherent in the creativity of the process of producing the activity by the teacher/design and the energy/activity of engaging with it by the student.
Cantoni, L. (2008), ‘OER – Open Educational Resources: problems, opportunities and challenges, Keynote presentation, 11th Annual ELC-NET Conference, E-Learning Campus Zurich, University of Zurich, 25th January 2008.
Downes, S. (2007), ‘Models for sustainable Open Educational Resources’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, Vol. 3.