Repurposing with a purpose: A story with a happy ending

• Published in: Journal of interactive media in education : JiME Vol. 2010; no. 1; pp. 5 - 20
• Main Authors: Greaves, Lyn, Roller, Sibel, Bradley, Claire
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University 01.01.2010; Ubiquity Press
• Subjects: Business Education; College Students; Constructivism (Learning); Foreign Countries; Independent Study; Information Systems; Instructional Design; learning objects, reusable learning objects, RLOs, situated learning, scaffolding, repurpose, re-use, e-materials development, blended and flexible learning, action research, learning designs, digital learning literacies; Science Education; United Kingdom; Universities; Virtual Classrooms; United Kingdom
• ISSN: 1365-893X; 1365-893X
• DOI: 10.5334/2010-5

The work reported here forms part of a UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funded project (BL4ACE) (http://bl4ace.tvu.ac.uk/). This project built on previous work that evaluated the effectiveness of a learning design to underpin academic competence in a Business Studies degree. A significant concern of the blended learning design was to scaffold independent learning activities by incorporating and reusing interactive Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) within a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). This paper reports on improvements in learner experience and performance following the transfer of the established Business Studies learning design across subject domains to a Science module. It reports on the enhancement of both modules by reusing and repurposing existing RLOs from other Institutions, and evaluates the experiences of both Business and Science students using the support provided through the interactive learning materials. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)