Implications of COLIS for Course Development: The need for secondary usage meta-data

The second iteration of the Collaborative Online Learning and Information Systems consortium project (COLIS), called the Interaction of IT Systems and Repositories Project (IIS&R,) is an Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) funded initiative. During this new phase of the project, research is to be conducted into the useability of the COLIS Demonstrator as a testbed for a standards-based, e-learning environment of the future. Part of the research funding is to support investigation of teachers’ and learners’ evaluation of the system: its viability as, amongst other things, a means of improving interoperability between Learning Object Management Systems (LOMS) and information search gateways, between creators of learning objects and teachers wishing to purchase or exchange learning objects. Associated with learning objects will be digital rights (DR) and meta-data. In relating the COLIS Demonstrator to teaching experience in the real world, this paper raises some of the issues that educators now face when setting up the learning context, assembling learning resources and sequencing learning activities. Reflection on the contextual situation of staff raises issues which potentially affect the development of an integrated system such as COLIS.