e-Learning > Reusability, Standards and Learning Objects

Much effort has been put into the technical reuse of electronically-based teaching materials and in particular creating or re-using Learning Objects. These are self contained units that are properly tagged with keywords, or other metadata, and often stored in an XML file format. Creating a course requires putting together a sequence of learning objects. There are both proprietary and open, non-commercial and commercial, peer-reviewed repositories of learning objects such as the Merlot repository.

A common standard format for e-learning content is SCORM whilst other specifications allow for the transporting of "learning objects" (Schools Interoperability Framework) or categorizing meta-data (LOM).

These standards themselves are early in the maturity process the oldest being 8 years old. They are also relatively vertical specific: 
SIF is primarily pK-12, 
LOM is primarily Corp, Military and Higher Ed, 
SCORM is primarily Military and Corp with some Higher Ed. PESC- the Post-Secondary Education Standards Council- 
is also making headway in developing standards and learning objects for the Higher Ed space, 
SIF is beginning to seriously turn towards Instructional and Curriculum learning objects.