The reusabilty paradox

The reusability paradox as I posted last time is as Wiley et. Al. pointed out: the more bereft of context a Learning resource (LO or OER) is the more reusable it is but the less instructionally effective. People get more from highly structured online materials in an LMS or OER repostories, but is structured nature eviscerates it usability.

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I think that the reason that highly structured learning resources work so well is that people like to be guided, directed or outright told what to do. It is the most efficient way to achieve a goal in a lot of cases. People take the path of least resistance or the most expedient route to achieve a goal. Take this course for instance; had not the readings for week 4 being 'channeled' reading, the (perception of ) amount of resources I would have had to read would have made what already was a daunting task (due to my procrastination) into an insurmountable road-block to my progress. I would have had to then either take a hit on the reading /blog entry marks for that weeks deliverable or buckle-down for a technical paper immersion-fest! The guiding and rendering down of the instructor (and the papers themselves as they were overviews of literature and OERs) helped alleviate much of my apprehension and made the task achievable for me.

From my searches it seems that it is notoriously hard to keep track of how and when resources are being used. The metrics even using link back data are sporadically collected and of dubious value even by the CC Commons statistics people
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_statistics. I guess it would be harder to track if people didn't observe the letter of the liscence once a resource was downloaded and modified. If creating OERS is a time-consuming venture, then keeping statistics on these resources would be even more tedious and consuming. It is however, I think, at the crux of the reuse issue: how we can engage users – students and also educators and for what purposesthey using them ( whether we can tailor-make them for a context or not)

From another link I read on Wikieducator it stated that the cost of re-purposing a OER should be less than that of creating a new OER which brings with it the a host of technical and time constraints (which can be circumvented by Open source and standardized means). Also there are pedagogical limitations to recontextualizing a resource if embedded context is not easily removed. I suspect that Connexions and WikiEducator are headed in the right direction with the modularization of OERs to help them be repurposed but my question would be will this 'sub-element' compartmentalization be enough to outweigh the 'transaction costs"(complexity of Design, Cultural contexts etc.). Someone has to set the standard and then all parties need to comply to ensure maximum compatibility for reuse.

In my educational situation there are few people who know what an OER is, let alone how to repurpose it. I think what we are seeing is the efforts of a few groups and individuals creating and using these resources and drawing the general conclusions from the specific examples. It is good for debate and will ultimately lead to a greater good but without accurate measurements (metrics) how are we to make informed decisions on how to proceed to benefit the maximum number of people?