Generative learning objects, individual skills, skills clusters and adaptivity

Abstract

In this paper we want to relate the generativity of the learning objects to the adaptivity of objects to individual competences and skills and to clusters of skills. For this purpose, we present a documented review on the existing references with examples, on the set out of generativity in learning objects related to the students’ individual competences and to skills clusters taking into account that for objects to be efficacious and useful and for the teacher to use them objects have to adapt, as far as possible, to students’ singularities (learning style, conceptual representations, etc.) and to context in order to be sequenced in a simplified way and grouped in relation to skills clusters so as to be included in repositories with didactic specifications, without diminishing its adaptive use tosituations and more concrete problems. We start from the approach of e-learning patterns as the methodology that guides the analysis of concrete and original problem situations in practice. Generativity –as we set it out- increases the number of situations in which a single object can be used making it less dependant on the context, among other things. It is then, a characteristic of LOs that can be easily related to the adaptive character. We consider the analysis of content making it different from learning elements. As from this consideration we suggest a modification in Wiley’s taxonomy of learning objects, classifying them according to its own nature and structure as well as to the skills that they help develop on students. The chosen procedure departs from the taxonomy of learning objects mentioned above and, with a critical view on its limitations, we suggest the basis for a new taxonomy. Besides generative objects, we add didactic guides to the taxonomy as a tangential issue and we offer examples existing in repositories of the types of LO mentioned in the taxonomy.