Eduworks Research Eduworks Case Study: Reusable Learning

Eduworks Case Study: Reusable Learning

Reusable Learning

Focus on measuring and understanding reuse and re-purposing of learning assets on the Web.

Eduworks has participated in the National Science Digital Library initiative of the U.S. National Science Foundation (www.nsdl.org) since 2003. During that time Eduworks has researched best practices for content and systems design, implemented prototype technology focused on creating personal collections of reusable objects, and developed techniques for measuring the extent to which objects are being reused and re-purposed. The goal of this research is to improve access and reduce production costs of digital learning resources in academia.

In this particular study we measured reuse and re-purposing of learning assets in NSDL collection in three ways.

  1. We downloaded a snapshot of a large slice of the NSDL (40 GB) with the help of the San Diego Supercomputing Center and scanned several large non-NSDL sites to detect when objects in NSDL collections had been reused or re-purposed. To accomplish this, we developed a fingerprinting system to identify modified versions of common formats including HTML, Word, PDF and several types of image files.
  2. We administered surveys and conducted follow-on interviews with randomly selected users of two NSDL sites.

This study concluded that most objects are not reused or re-purposed. Estimates ranged from 0.5% to 5% depending on the type of object and nature of the site, with the 5% figure being for a tool that was developed as part of the NSDL. Survey respondents were mostly teachers, and they were split among teachers looking to learn from an NSDL resource and teachers evaluating a resource for use by their students.

Interviews conducted with survey respondents suggested that there is a potentially identifiable set of characteristics for “highly re-usable objects.”