Learning object repositories are useful, but are they usable?

Learning Object Repositories seems to be the solution to facilitate the sharing and reusing of learning material. As useful as they may appear, Learning Object Repositories are not in widespread use among faculty around the world. There are indications that the amount of work and time required to use the Repositories is the main reason for the reluctance of teachers. This work analyzes the tools for indexing and retrieval provided by ARIADNE, MERLOT and SMETE repositories and conducts a theoretical usability study over them. A review of the technologies used by state-of-the-art indexing and retrieval application in other context is also covered. As general result, the analysis found that the tools are in an immature stage that leads to several usability problems. The review shows that index and retrieval applications in other contexts have solve the same kind of problems using smarter approaches. This works recommends the inclusion of already available technology to improve tools’ usability that should lead to break the entrance barrier for the use and exploitation of