ABSTRACT
This chapter is about a relatively recent addition to the learning technologist's vocabulary, the learning object. Putting it succinctly, learning objects are reusable bits of learning content. Their significance lies in their purported capacity to be flexibly reused, thus helping to create personalized learning materials, even at a reduced cost. This claim is voiced by many (Atkinson and Wilson, 1969) but particularly adamantly by the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL) in its defence of the SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) approach (Dodds, 2001: 1–12). Learning objects, it would thus seem, are particularly helpful in sorting out the problems posed by the knowledge economy (Westera and Sloep, 2001; Downes, 2002). It is this thesis that I want to assess in this chapter.
