Review by: Reichert, Raimond (2004-07-27)

Much of the current debate on the reuse of elearning resources is focussed on technical aspects, e. g. providing information about and access to digital courseware. This article explores barriers to reuse and why technology is not sufficient for reuse to occur. It is an exceptional report in that it examines projects that were not successful.

Two cases are discussed in some detail. The first case was an exploration of how websites relating to plastic surgery, often of high visual quality, could be used by students of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 205 relevant websites were identified using search engines, 169 of which were still alive one year later. The problem is how to organize this wealth of material for educational purposes. This would require an enormous amount of work and technical resources. This case illustrates that having access to information is far easier than knowing how to embed it in an educational context.

The second case is the story of a consortium founded to provide new online materials for learning microbiology in the education of professional veterinarians. Many plans were made, but after two years, the consortium fell apart. The materials developed at one of the remaining universities were not reused by other institutions. The barriers identified in this case were inadequate funding, technical platform problems, and insufficient production of the modules – the most labor-intense work, it might be added. It seems that the work environment of higher education needs to be more supportive towards the time needed for innovation and collaboration.

The two cases highlight the need for (1) effective educational design in combining a number of resources and (2) policies and processes which support collaboration to build new materials. There is much to be learned from failures, and this report points to some problems that need to be solved when creating and reusing digital resources in higher education.