The challenge of standards for cognitive styles adaptable biomedicine learning object

A standards-based infrastructure for sharing biomedical educational contents should apply standards which address the scope and functionality associated with learning objects from perspectives of all actors involved in their life-cycles. The ¿learner¿ actor is arguably the most important but also the most complex, heterogeneous and therefore problematic. This paper discusses impact of the latter view from a cognitive styles perspective. Findings of a study of the impact of cognitive style on search for information on the Web are reported and a tentative conceptual framework is presented. The links we have identified between individual differences and search strategies suggest that experience, gender and cognitive styles should all be taken into account when tailoring learning objects to suit individual learners, and hence place additional requirements on related standards.