ABSTRACT
A culture of reuse and developing reusable educational software or developing ‘learning objects’ can enable academics to build on each others’ learning technology designs and share their experiences of implementation. The chapters that follow in this part of the book describe the process of reuse and the sort of designs that are viable in online learning. In this chapter we draw on research and our experiences to support a view that, for e-learning to be successful, academics need to remain close to the capabilities of the media, as they must design the learning experience to help students engage with the knowledge and skills they are teaching. This means that the teaching tools we create for academics must embody the experience of what works for the learner, and must be easy for academics to use. A ‘generic learning activity model’ should provide a virtual teaching tool for the academic that embodies good pedagogic practice, building on an iterative design and evaluation process. Such tools are feasible, but research results show, for example, that as teaching ideas are shared and practice transfers, the original pedagogic ideas can develop differently in the new teaching context.
