Digital Learning Resources in Higher Education: Designing for Large-scale Use

In a series of faculty-based projects on design, realization, implementation, use and evaluation of digital learning resources for higher education, many design requirements emerged and were evaluated. This paper focuses on those requirements that are related with large-scale use. It is argued that sustainable quality of design and realization of digital learning resources will only be possible when these resources are used by many students and teachers. Design requirements of digital learning resources should therefore be consistent with one or more scenarios for large-scale use. This paper discusses eight large-scale use scenarios that can be useful reference scenarios for design of digital learning resources in higher education. It is argued that different large-scale use scenarios imply different sets of design requirements. Vice versa, certain design requirements are relevant in some reference scenarios and irrelevant in other reference scenarios.