Practical Guidelines for Learning Object Granularity from One Higher Education Setting

Abstract

In considering the granularity of learning objects, one might be reminded of the cliche of the student who approaches her professor with the question, "How long does my paper have to be?" and the professor's response of, "Long enough to cover the topic and short enough to be concise." While learning object granularity has implications for both reusability and the development, specific decisions related to granularity are governed by the organizational context in which the learning objects are developed. It is a widespread hope that learning objects created in one organizational context will be routinely incorporated into different contexts. At present, it is the immediate organizational context of a learning object initiative that holds the most promise for addressing specific granularity issues such as the proportion of content relative to practice and assessment, the specific size limits of content, practice, and assessment, and heuristics for comparing time length of text with time length of various other media types (e.g., video, audio, and interactive media) in the implementation of content, practice, and assessment sections.