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Overview

What are they?

Learning objects are like building blocks—small reusable components to encourage creative thinking through creative play. A learning object can be any digitized resource used to support learning, and accomplish a learning objective.

How do they work?

Learning objects make difficult concepts more manageable for the learner to comprehend. They cater to how short-term memory works by focusing on small blocks of information that can be effectively comprehended at one time. Typically, educational content is broken down into two to fifteen minute blocks of learning, making them the ideal format for digital culture and shortened attention spans.

How do I use them?

Learning objects are highly reusable and versatile. They can be reused in multiple environments and provide limitless opportunities for curriculum building. Each object can be used independently or in combination with other objects; in the classroom, online, or as mobile applications; pulled together ahead of time or at the last minute by a student. Colleges and institutions can share them, building an entire community of learning objects.

What do they look like?

Learning objects can contain a single element like a video clip, or a mix of elements including navigation schemes, collaboration tools, or interactive graphics.

Benefits

What are the benefits?

Learning objects represent the next generation of curricular support in higher education.

• improves learning
• engages the learner
• encourages intellectual interaction
• encourages creative thinking
• small components make difficult concepts easier to gasp
• can be customized to your audience
• can be used in classroom, online or on the go with mobile devices
• share them with colleagues of different institutions as part of a learning community
• doesn’t overload the user so they are able to comprehend the content and absorb it
• versatile usage gives it multiple purposes
• gives you a competitive edge by encouraging learner satisfaction
• Provides an even richer array of multimedia texts for integration into current curriculum

Featuring

Gapminder World

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Gapminder Website

Gapminder Foundation is a non-profit organization founded to promote the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Their site features an amazing learning object--an animated and interactive graph that follows global development trends. A goal of Gapminder is to promote a fact-based worldview in a fascinating and engaging way. Their learning object succeeds through the use of colorful graphics that animate statistical data reflecting social, economic and environmental development across the world.

You can also have a similar object that helps visualize statistical data, enabling clients, employees, and students to engage with important data, in meaningful ways. Viewing data in a pleasurable and visually arresting way guarantees that people will return again and again to view the data, which quickens comprehension of information.

Featuring

BBC's British History Timeline

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The BBC website offers a colorful and exciting interactive timeline of British History covering periods 6000 BC to 2000 AD. Key time periods are divided into segments and colored to illustrate distinct points in time. The ability to view immense spans of time in a condensed format is a particularly nice feature that helps users quickly grasp the entire history of Britain or users can zoom in to view time periods in greater detail. On the timeline, hotspots of key events enables pop-overs containing quick facts that can be clicked through to access more information. In addition, the timeline offers “journeys” that highlight subject specific links for further exploration (i.e. “slavery” or “women’s rights”).

You too can offer your users an equally engaging timeline to demonstrate the development of your key subject over time, whether that be the evolution of a species, the history of rock-n-roll music, or an animated timeline illustrating the growth of your company. The creative possibilities are endless.

Featuring

National Geographic's Mapping Memory in 3D

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National Geographic Learning Object catalogue

The National Geographic website offers a wide variety of incredible learning objects divided into three types: interactives, quizzes, and maps. All of these are worth taking a look at but the learning object I wish to feature here is an interactive, “Mapping Memory in 3D.” This object divides its content into three major tabs: making memories, storing memories, and forgetting. Each section is also broken down into granular and modular subsections. Each subsection provides animations of the brain function, a labeled diagram of related parts of the brain, and text to reinforce key information. The illustrations provide a good amount of visual detail to hold users’ interest so that they feel encouraged to continue the entire lesson. It really is a compelling object!

Any subject that requires diagramming of information or the illustration of a process can be presented as a learning object for your classroom or business. You can replace animated simulations with a photo or video if that suits your needs, and you can always add a sound file to further enhance the multimedia experience.