Drawing on the experience of development and use of a virtual learning environment (VLE) at a public Mexican university, this article explores the tension between the most common definitions and attributes of learning object (LO) in the mainstream literature, and the teacher's practices around the creation and incorporation of LOs in the VLE. This experience shows that attempting to define LOs from strictly technical or industrial parameters might be limiting in the context of educational institutions, since teachers are developing and using LOs effectively, despite their little adherence to prescriptive definitions. Yet it is important to support teachers in order to take advantage of the interactive and multimedia potentialities afforded by this technology, instead of using it mostly for delivering static content. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)