The MIH (Multicultural Interdisciplinary Handbook) project provides new tools for helping teachers and pupils plunge deeper into the culture and the language of another nation via its history and its landscape/geography. The Digital Modules are the most innovative tool of the project. Throughout the chapter, the authors present all stages to develop MIH Digital Modules: (1) the definition of the Learning Object Model based on IEEE LOM; (2) the framework design in order to provide quality digital contents; (3) the Digital Modules production process both during the project and after the end of the project; (4) the tutorials that support all the creation process; and last, but not least, and (5) the multicultural perspective of the Digital Modules.
TopLearning Object Model
In order to develop the MIH Digital Modules, we have proposed a LO model based on the IEEE LOM (2002) with different granularity characteristic for the LO. This way, we have achieved a multilayer LO that will support the multicultural aspects of the digital contents.
There are different definitions of this concept (IEEE LOM, 2002; Polsani, 2003; Wiley, 2000; Moreno & Bailly-Baillière, 2002). In this LO model, we have worked with the definition given by Morales et al. (2007) in order to build LO of greater granularity, following the IEEE LOM standard. This way, a LO is defined as “a unit with a learning objective, together with digital and independent capabilities containing one or a few related ideas and accessible through metadata to be reused in different contexts and platforms.”
The Reusable Learning (2004) website, sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), defined granularity as “the size, decomposability, and the extent to which a resource is intended to be used as part of a larger resource.” (Reusable Learning, 2004). IEEE LOM standard presents four aggregations levels in order to describe the granularity of a LO (1 being the smallest level of aggregation and 4 the largest level of granularity).
In this context, Morales et al.’s definition suggests a LO with an aggregation level 2 according to the IEEE LOM standard (this means a collection of level 1 learning objects, each of them with one or more level 1 learning objects).
Figure 1 shows the MIH learning object model proposal. In this model, the digital modules are LO that represent a unit of a topic discussed from different cultural point of views. This means that these LO are an aggregation of a set of more basic LO that represents a unit with only one didactic goal that will be developed from a specific cultural orientation. These LO are the aggregation of a set of elementary resources that will be packaged into LO without any didactic goal.
Figure 1. MIH learning object model
According to this, the simpler LO, without didactic charge, have an aggregation level 1, and they represent the basic resources, such as a table, a text, an animation, an audio, or a video.