Principles of Building Portable Learning Objects

Building learning objects can be time consuming, but rewarding.  One of the benefits of creating learning objects is that they can be used repeatedly.  So, while it may take time to create a learning object, it can actually be a time saver in the long run as well as a good teaching tool.

For my Teacher Open Online training, I built two "learning objects" on the tragedy of the commons.

The first is a Prezi presentation.

The Prezi above is meant from instruction.  It presents information in a dynamic way and asks a question in the middle to try to keep students thinking.

The next learning object that I created is a quiz using poll-maker.com.  Students can access the quiz here.  I can get the results of the quiz by going here.  I didn't use it here, but one nice thing that I discovered about poll-maker quiz maker is that you can insert logic.  For example, if a student gets a question right, the quiz can go to one question, but if the student misses a question, the student can go to another question for remediation.  I had never used poll-maker before today, but I like it.  It is more user friendly than poll-everywhere which I had used before.

The quiz here is meant as an assessment.  The short assessment that I made can be used as a quick check to students understanding after a video or reading assignment.