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I read the article of Downes (2001) titled Learning Objects: Resources for distance education worldwide. Few of the technical things were complicated to understand, the rest was fine.

The article of Stephen Downes reflects on theoretical and practical elements of learning objects. He has quoted many interesting examples on learning objects and different programming structures. 

The writer states "Suppose that just one description of the sine wave function is produced. A high quality and fully interactive piece of learning material could be produced for, perhaps, $1,000. If 1,000 institutions share this one item, the cost is $1 per institution. But if each of a thousand institutions produces a similar item, then each institution must pay $1,000, with a resulting total expenditure of $1,000,000." 

True! On that premise, I have a question, are ALL the institutions willing to collaborate in producing quality content by a single institution and share with the rest?; are ALL the institutions willing to share resources with others free or at low cost? We all know the answer! The ongoing content war shows availability of the same content on hundreds and thousands of websites. Most of the institutions are chasing to adopt the business model of education than sharing quality content for free or low rate with all. That could be the reason for not finding much OER content production from many countries, except few, who truly understand its value!

After reading the article, I realized that we need to take many people into consideration when designing online courses.

Downes states "The vast majority of course syllabi require that students obtain more than one textbook". In Pakistan, as far as I know, textbooks until grade 12 is same and only one textbook for each course is required to be studied. They often buy workbooks (easy notes), which are legally not approved in Pakistan.

I agree with this statement  "students frequently use parts of books (or parts of journals) in their research and reading. That’s why most university libraries come equipped with photocopiers". This is the most common practice at the university level in Pakistan as well.

Few examples such as resources on Holocaust are good, but there are varieties of subject areas, which are unavailable such as I cannot find open education resources or any free online courses on Elements of Human Rights in Higher Education Policies of Pakistan.

From the readings, I extracted the following challenges: time, availability of contextual resources, familiarity with technicality, learning objectives, the generalizability of content, user-friendly platform, and above all COST of online courses. I  want to start an online course for people living in far wide areas of Pakistan, but unless I find funding agencies along with a good team, it is difficult to turn ideas into reality, because the term 'OPEN' is very political in many ways. 

The writer has discussed the concept of Rapid Application Design (RAD). The cost is reduced due to RAD, but indirectly, some cost is involved!

I like Bates model, but too expensive! From the readings, I understood that there is a gap in connectivity between producers, institutions and resources. OER agencies must provide free platform and assistance to writers and institutions who want to contribute their part for open access. Further "reusable learning materials and reusable applications" must be taken into consideration when designing learning objects. After all, learning object must look for performance-based outcomes than content-based,