Designing a learning objects repository-the views of higher education faculty

This paper presents the initial stages of the design of a National Learning Objects Repository for Cyprus (NLORC). It examines the views of the faculty members of Intrecollege, a College of Higher Education in Cyprus, with regards to the need of such a repository. These views were collected through a questionnaire. The NLORC will provide a web-based application allowing indexing, uploading and downloading of e-learning resources in Cyprus and the creation, modification and querying of Learning Objects (LOs). This paper presents a simple model that will underpin the development of the NLORC. After careful consideration and studying of the existing Learning Objects Metadata Standards, it has been decided that the NLORC application should be developed using a database system supporting object-orientation and temporal database features. As a result of this, the model presented herein suggests an object-oriented database structure to form a basis for the application and to cater for the storage of the LOs, keeping a record of the relations between them and allowing their retrieval and manipulation.