Types of Educational Resources

The development of content standards for use in the different modes of learning: face, blended and / or virtual universities is crucial in the XXI century. The Learning Objects approach (OA) aims to facilitate the design of small units of content that can be combined and reused in different courses and thus take advantage of the development of educational programs and materials.

According Learning Standards Comitee Technlogy (LTSC) of IEEE, the term "learning object" (LO) defined as any entity that can be used, reused or referenced in the context of learning supported by technology. Thus a LO is an instructional module that has the following four characteristics:

• It is reusable: easily can be contextualized according to the specific needs of the teaching-learning process and is adaptable to the needs of a particular course or career thematic unity.
• It is flexible: you can modify and update with ease. It is accessible and interoperable: independent of the
• technologies used and the operating system (platform).

In VCPH although matches the characteristics posed LTSC, LO is considered a digital or any object that has an educational purpose in a specific environment for that purpose, irrespective of their inner qualities.

The LO is classified taking into account their educational use and levels of granularity:

As used Pedagogical

• Objects instruction articles, workshops, seminars, case studies, etc.
• Objetos collaborative forums, chat, Elluminate, online meetings, etc.
• Objetos practices: simulations, software, online labs, research projects, etc. Objects of evaluation: partial evaluation, final certification, etc.

According to the granularity levels (N1, N2, N3, N4)

The granularity is another feature that apply to learning objects within the context of teaching, which is related to the reusability. The granularity is the power of a learning object has to determine, from the educational elements that form it, or what entity which maintain themselves if they are isolated from the context that provides a whole learning object.

The concept of granularity refers specifically to the dimensions that may have LO, which directly affect their teaching reusability. The smaller the object is easier to combine and thus more reusable.

According to the IEEE-LOM, there are four levels of granularity.

N1. It is the smallest level of aggregation, a unit of learning. For example, a chest X-ray image, multimedia or fragments thereof. (Applicable to material apparently indivisible, as a PDF file, etc.).

N2. A collection of educational level 1, a teaching unit (lesson) on acute respiratory infections with radiological images. For example, a collection of atomic materials (an HTML file with images referred from the same).

N3. A collection of level 2 learning objects, for example, a modular unit or course of respiratory syndromes. For example, two or more materials level 2 collection of lessons on acute respiratory infections from different sources, a website made up of multiple HTML documents).

N4. The higher level of granularity. For example, a set of courses for a diploma or degree. (Diploma, Masters).

NOTE-The objects can contain objects Level 4 Level 3. They may also be formed by other objects recursively level 4.

Object Metadata Standard for Education  IEEE-LOM