Abstract—Connexions is a Learning Object Repository that has gained notoriety as a successful example of collaborative creation of learning materials. In a previous quantitative study about the characteristics of learning material repositories, Connexions presented some anomalies that prevented it to be classified together with other Learning Object Repositories. This paper, working with updated data, finds that those anomalies are not errors of the previous study, but that the anomalies have increased and are more strongly expressed. Moreover, those anomalies, namely the exponential growth in the number of contributors and content, seem to be the reason behind the success of Connexions. It is concluded in this work that Connexions strategy of “release early, release often”, together with the openness of its core community, that welcome and support newcomers and sporadic contributors, offer a reasonable explanation for the exponential growth trends found in Connection, that can be classified now as a Social Learning Object Repository.

Index Terms—learning object repositories, social networks, connexions, social LOR