Resource-based learning (RBL)

This places resources in the foreground of learning, and the learner's interaction and selection of these (which may include human resources) is the driving principle. Ryan (2000) uses the following definition for RBL, taken from the Australian National Council on Open and Distance Education. RBL is ‘an integrated set of strategies to promote student centred learning in a mass education context, through a combination of specially designed learning resources and interactive media and technologies’. If one views the abundance of resources as the primary factor in a pedagogy of abundance then RBL looks like an appropriate strategy. I would suggest that it is often still grounded in a scarcity approach, however; for example, Ryan goes on to argue that ‘these integrated strategies for RBL should be based on the application of a range of instructional design principles to the development of learning materials’. In a world of abundance the emphasis is less on the development of specific learning materials than on the selection, aggregation and interpretation of existing materials.