May 14-16, 2004

The second NSDL Reusable Learning Workshop was held May 14-16, 2004 at the Wyndham, Washington, D.C. Attendees should review the Agenda, Logistics, Handouts and Webboard.

This workshop was held in conjunction with the 2004 Mathematical Sciences Conference Group on Digital Educational Resources Meeting.

Reusability Workshop Takeaways

The workshop will focus on the following six topic areas.

  1. Framework for Reusability

    The starting point for this workshop will be a framework for reusability of digital learning resources. The framework combines educational, technical and other perspectives from the reusability literature. It identifies five factors that affect reusability:

    • Granularity: Granularity captures the size, decomposability and the extent to which a resource is intended to be used as part of a larger resource. The granularity of a resource determines what “reuse” means and frames any discussion about its reuse.
    • Design: Design refers to the content, presentation, structure, pedagogy and context of a resource. These are intrinsic aspects of a resource that affect reusability.
    • Interoperability: Interoperability measures the extent to which a digital resource will “plug and play” on different platforms, or can be modified using different tools.
    • Rights: Intellectual property rights, attribution and the ability to access and modify source code all impact reusability.
    • Metadata: Metadata enables people to find resources that meet their needs and to properly use them once found.

  2. Reusable Design Guidelines

    This workshop will introduce you to a set of guidelines for designing and creating reusable content. These are targeted at educators and development teams who contribute content to NSDL collections. The guidelines are patterned after Web Accessiblity Initiative guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, 2004).

  3. Interoperability and Standards

    Interoperability is a technical subject that touches on software and standards. This workshop will include an overview and demonstration of interoperability standards and how they are used in authoring and delivery platforms. It will also include a discussion of interoperability for software applications.

  4. Implementing and Supporting Reusability

    Many NSDL collections (or services) aggregate, maintain and disseminate content without developing it themselves. Most content is not developed by the collections themselves. This workshop will discuss collection policies and actions that can help support reusability at the collection level.