The LOM Approach—A CALL for Concern?

Abstract

The LOM (Learning Object Model) approach to courseware design seems to be driven by a desire to increase access to education as well as use technology to enable a higher staff – student ratio than is currently possible. The LOM standard involves the use of standard metadata descriptions of content and adaptive content engines to deliver the conglomerate learning objects to the learner. Whilst there are clear issues of both intellectual property rights as well as appropriate business models (DfES, 2001; HEFCE, 2003), it would also appear that there are a number of other disadvantages. These included the loss of teacher input, the need for a large number of learning objects and different end-user interfaces Our proposed solution, Syntactics, enables teachers to create content and customise materials with only basic IT skills in an environment which offers a common user interface. We argue that such systems, driven by technology, offer many benefits to language teachers and present the CALL community with an opportunity to rethink its strategies.