Introduction
Our first generation of RLOs, whilst engaging, interactive and educationally effective, is limited in some respects. The basic unit of reuse is the object as a whole and this leads to marked limitation in productivity. There is a clear need to develop a more flexible format for developing learning objects which will support both increased productivity in development and flexible repurposing by local tutors. It is these considerations that led to the development of the concept of generative learning objects (GLOs).
We define generative learning objects as any learning object that can be customised, adapted, edited or recombined for specific teaching and learning purposes. An example of a simple GLO could be where a tutor has selected a number of existing learning objects (or their sub-sections) and combined them in a particular learning sequence. More complex and powerful GLOs can be designed with a generic 'core' or base template that can be customised or instantiated, either at run-time or stored as hard-coded. A detailed description of this follows. This is taken from our paper "A Case in the Design of Generative Learning Objects (GLOs): Applied Statistical Methods GLOs" (Morales, Leeder, Boyle 2004) word | pdf
