COMMUNITY

CD-LOR DIMENSIONS OF
LEARNING OBJECT
REPOSITORIES

Project Overview
PROJECT OVERVIEW
CD-LOR (a JISC-funded, 2 year project) is investigating enablers and barriers to successful
embedding of learning object (LO) repositories within a diverse range of learning communities.
Such communities include those based in individual and federated institutions and those that exist
across institutions (regionally, nationally and internationally), e.g. discipline-based communities.
CD-LOR is focussing on the social and cultural dimensions of LO repositories within learning
communities.

CHALLENGES & ISSUES ASSOCIATE PARTNERS

Changing roles of stakeholders If LO repositories are The associate partners have
to be used to support teaching and learning, the work implemented or are implementing
practices and roles of teachers and other staff will LO repositories for use
probably need to change. For example, some staff might across a wide range of community
be more involved in resource preparation, others in types. They are:
resource sharing and still others in metadata creation or • University of Edinburgh
resource evaluation. • UHI Millenium Institute
• Aberdeen University
The organisation of institutions In order to realize the • University of Ireland,
full benefits from LO repositories, it is necessary to Galway
understand how institutions and their internal and external • SIESWE Learning
relationships function, alongside understanding how the Exchange
grass-roots practices of teachers and learners operate • Jorum
within institutions. • IVIMEDS
• Spoken Word Services
Digital rights management Widespread use of
repositories will depend on institutions, LO contributors
and users having confidence that intellectual property
rights are upheld. PROJECT CONTACTS
Allison Littlejohn
Quality of learning objects On one hand users want allison.littlejohn@gcal.ac.uk
access to high quality resources, on the other they may be Colin Milligan
reluctant to share their own resources if they feel colin.milligan@strath.ac.uk
restricted by quality assurance mechanisms.
Anoush Margaryan
anoush.margaryan@gcal.ac.uk
Metadata creation workflows Research has indicated
that who creates metadata, and how, may be a key trust Peter Douglas
issue for repository use. p.douglas@intrallect.com

PROJECT PARTNERS:
Glasgow Caledonian University, University of Strathclyde, Intrallect Ltd
PROJECT METHODOLOGY
To investigate the factors underlying successful LO Repository deployment, CDL-LOR has been:
• carrying out desk and field research into the barriers to uptake & embedding of LO
repositories
• developing, implementing & testing solutions to barriers in testbeds with learning
communities
• producing use cases, case studies and guidelines for LO repository implementation
• producing recommendations for managers on policy, strategy, systems and workflow issues
• developing use cases linking LO repositories to wider information management processes
• making recommendations for ongoing research and development

PROJECT FINDINGS
Based on the work carried out, we recommend:
• LORs should be based firmly on user needs and context and address problems
meaningful to users
Therefore a key element of the scoping process for a LOR should be to ascertain exactly
what problem the LOR is being asked to solve? This will necessitate greater consideration
of the needs of the communities when designing LORs including surveying the needs of
potential users, and the processes by which they make decisions about adopting
technology.
• Product innovation should involve process innovation
LORs are typical product innovations, but their wider adoption and implementation will not
be possible without parallel process innovations including change in pedagogic processes,
institutional processes for support of innovations, mechanisms for recognitions and rewards
etc. This should be reflected in institutional and national strategy and longer term focus.
• Impact and added value for users must be apparent
Evidence is needed to demonstrate to potential users that LORs can positively impact their
learning and teaching processes on the level of individuals and communities. We expect to
recommend that JISC fund studies into collecting evidence of such impact and added value.

PROJECT OUTPUTS
You can read about the findings of the project through the following project outputs:

Desk Study
Recommendations

Personal Resource management
Structured Guidelines for
Survey establishing and evaluating LO

Use Case, Implementations and Repositories
Evaluations Reports
Repository Users Survey

CONTACT: colin.milligan@strath.ac.uk
PROJECT WEB SITE: http://academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/