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Abstract
Most studies on reusable digital learning materials, learning objects (LOs), relate to their use in universities. Few empirical studies exist to explore the impact of LOs on pedagogy, especially in schools. This paper provides evidence from an evaluation of the use of LOs in schools. The evidence is from a European Union‐funded project, Context eLearning with Broadband Technologies (CELEBRATE), involving 500 schools in six countries across Europe, in a pilot to examine the impact of LOs on pedagogy. It brought together producers and users to try out technically and pedagogically sound ways of producing, making available through a portal, and using LOs. This paper reports data from both quantitative and qualitative studies conducted during 2004, including: online surveys (of all the teachers involved), routine data from the portal and semi‐structured interviews in 40 schools in all six countries.
Notes
1. These six countries are Finland, France, Hungary, Israel, Norway and the UK.
2. Details are given at http://celebrate.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/en/index_celebrate.cfm (accessed 24 June 2005).
3. This is part of an IEEE standard: http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/ (accessed 24 June 2005).
4. These comments were quoted in the web announcement of the 2001 report: http://www.col.org/virtualed/index2.htm (accessed 24 June 2005).
5. The experimental studies and classroom case studies are discussed in the other papers in this issue (Ilomäki et al., Citation2006; Nurmi & Jaakkola, Citation2006).
6. The full report of the questionnaire data are given in Li (Citation2004), and in the full evaluation report http://www.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/Include_to_content/celebrate/file/Deliverable7_2EvaluationReport02Dec04.pdf Appendix 2 (accessed 24 June 2006).
7. For more details of the methodology see McCormick and Clifford (Citation2004).
8. More details are given in http://www.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/Include_to_content/celebrate/file/Deliverable7_2EvaluationReport02Dec04.pdf Section 3.3 (accessed 24 June 2006).
9. See Ilomäki et al. (Citation2006, in this issue) for such an example.
10. The latter is a contractor for the Finnish National Board of Education (NBE).
11. We realise that in making such statements teachers are drawing on their professional judgement, not necessarily substantiated by evidence from assessments of achievement.
12. The classroom studies explore this (see Ilomäki et al., Citation2006).