e-Learning design for localisation and personalisation

The University of Nottingham (UoN) is involved with two UK nationally funded e-learning projects that has involved collaborations with Universities across the UK, China and Malaysia. These multimedia online projects are the V-ResORT project, developing research training materials and the eChina-UK eEducator project, developing tutor training materials for online tutors which has been piloted in both China and Malaysia. Both these projects seek to change teaching and learning practice in Higher Education. To this end, the project resources have been designed so that they can be localised, i.e. adapted to suit local institutional needs, and personalised, i.e. learners are supported in selecting pathways through the materials to match their personal learning needs. These projects have consciously adopted a non-reusable learning object approach for both pedagogic and ethical reasons and the paper explores the rationale for this. In addition these projects have involved the development of a range of bespoke tools designed by the UoN such as: an online Workspace tool that supports reflection, peer sharing and the development of a portfolio of workand an online Learning Activity Analysis Tool (LAAT) to support the development of effective scaffolding for online learners