1. Next Steps???

2. Funding Agencies/Foundations Agencies and foundations that provide financial support to scholars should require that the projects they support be listed on sites like Merlot (http://www.merlot.org), which collects links to online learning materials. Even better, the agencies could establish programs that encourage faculty members in a given discipline to create learning materials for their curricula.http://www.merlot.org

3. Professional Societies Professional societies could encourage their members to present and document innovative uses of electronic materials, and create ways to evaluate those uses. Listing what exists within a discipline would be very helpful; equally important would be a list of what's missing. Societies should ask their members to record their projects and their uses of other people's materials in discipline-based repositories.

4. Provosts and Academic Administrators Provosts and other academic administrators could think about how their institutions reward innovation. Is the production of innovative scholarship and educational materials rewarded in promotion and tenure processes? Are IT staffing, budgets, and resources seen as critical components of teaching and scholarship, and not simply as administrative tools?

5. Librarians Librarians could work with faculty members to find out what digital educational materials are already available in their fields, and to help professors use them.

6. Technologists Technology experts should adopt state-of- the-art practices when working on new projects with faculty members. It is important to adhere to standards that will allow materials to remain usable as underlying technologies change. A good place to start is the New Media Consortium's learning-object guidelines (see http://www.nmc.org/guidelines).http://www.nmc.org/guidelines

7. Content Developers Content developers should be explicit about the conditions under which they will allow others to use and modify their materials. With a license from Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.org), a developer can grant various levels of permission so a user doesn't need to make a specific request.http://www.creativecommons.org

8. Publishers Publishers could offer licenses to online materials separately from textbooks or other less-flexible products.

9. Educational Researchers Educational researchers could study the pedagogical benefits of teaching with learning objects and other digital materials, and publish their findings where faculty members will read them -- in disciplinary journals, not journals of pedagogy.

10. Next Steps: Communities of Practice –NMC http://www.nmc.orghttp://www.nmc.org –Merlot http://www.merlot.orghttp://www.merlot.org –NLII http://www.educause.edu/nlii/http://www.educause.edu/nlii/ –Academic Commons Mailing lists http://lists.academiccommons.org/mailman/listinf o/learningobjects-l http://lists.academiccommons.org/mailman/listinf o/learningobjects-l Lola http://www.lolaexchange.orghttp://www.lolaexchange.org Works-in-progress and Developer’s kit http://www.academiccommons.org/index.php?pa ge=developerskit http://www.academiccommons.org/index.php?pa ge=developerskit

11. Next Steps: Communities of Practice –NMC http://www.nmc.orghttp://www.nmc.org –Merlot http://www.merlot.orghttp://www.merlot.org –NLII http://www.educause.edu/nlii/http://www.educause.edu/nlii/ –MANE IT Leaders Blog http://blogs.cet.middlebury.edu/mane/ –Academic Commons Mailing lists http://lists.academiccommons.org/mailman/listinfo/learning objects-l http://lists.academiccommons.org/mailman/listinfo/learning objects-l Lola http://www.lolaexchange.orghttp://www.lolaexchange.org Works-in-progress and Developer’s kit http://www.academiccommons.org/index.php?page=devel operskit http://www.academiccommons.org/index.php?page=devel operskit