Personal learning environment

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Definitions

Graham Attwell defines Personal Learning Environments (PLE) as an idea that firstly integrates "pressures and movements" like lifelong learning, informal learning, learning styles, new approaches to assessment, cognitive tools. Furthermore, PLEs are inspired by the success of "sticky" new technologies in ubiquitous computing and social software. ([1], retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST)]

“The most compelling argument for the PLE is to develop educational technology which can respond to the way people are using technology for learning and which allows them to themselves shape their own learning spaces, to form and join communities and to create, consume, remix, and share material”.([2], retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST)]

On also may define a PLE as a system (but may people including Daniel K. Schneider may not necessarily agree). E.g. PLE Wiki defines 'Personal Learning Environments as systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to set their own learning goals, manage their learning; managing both content and process, communicate with others in the process of learning, and thereby achieve learning goals. A PLE may be composed of one or more sub-systems: As such it may be a desktop application, or composed of one or more web-based services. (retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST)).

“A PLE is characterized by the freeform use of a set of lightweight services and tools that belong to and are controlled by individual learners. Rather than integrating different services into a centralized system, the idea is to provide the learner with a myriad of services and hand over control to her to select and use the services the way she deems fit. A PLE driven approach does not only provide personal spaces, which belong to and are controlled by the user, but also requires a social context by offering means to connect with other personal spaces for effective knowledge sharing and collaborative knowledge creation.” Mohamed A. Chatti

“A Personal Learning Environment is a facility for an individual to access, aggregate, configure and manipulate digital artifacts of their ongoing learning experience” Ron Lubensky, retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST).

PLE Architectures

Daniel K. Schneider doesn't believe that there is 'the' personal environment. While an institution may indeed provide a central access point to loosely coupled services within a web services-based architecture like e-framework, parts of it always will be external services and tools, cool things that "pop up" and are useful just for a precise learner or maybe a teacher.

However, a number of design criteria for next generation learning environments can be formulated, in particular the one that learners can shape their own learning space. Future learning environments have to be PLEs in at least some regards, since the whole history of educational technology demonstrates, that the most popular applications in education always have been professional tools, not software made specifically for education.

Therefore, one also could define a PLE in terms of tools it provides (see also the Epsilen architecture below). E.g.

The Jafari model

Jafari et al (2006) identify:

(1) Lifelong. The learning process is fluid. Learners can move between schools and between jobs and within the job between doing and just-in-time open learning. Therefore a system should not be campus-based, “the learner's e-portfolio being the foundation and the connecting point to the system. This new design model automatically creates an e-portfolio account for every learner, along with a personal URL or Web address, forming a lifelong learning repository, lifelong contact information, and a cyber-identity.” (Jafari, 2006).

(2) Outsourced to a organization that provides services to both learner (his whole life) and the school.

(3) Global. Break down walls, e.g. offer a FOAF-like Colleague of a colleague (COAC) service, e.g. let outsiders participate in educational activities.

(4) Comprehensive. “As illustrated in Figure 1 (below), the Jafari model also proposes a comprehensive, 'Swiss Army knife' toolbox - that is, all the necessary tools for day-to-day learning and teaching tasks. These include tools for L/CMSs, e-portfolios, social and professional networking, peer review, learning assessment, and object repositories, as well as various communication and collaboration tools. With this model, the L/CMS is only a subset and a component of the e-learning environment. This model emulates the successful Microsoft Office Suite by offering all the important tools a user needs. And if an advanced tool is not included, such as an implemented L/CMS system on campus, this model offers integration and connectivity. These functions can be obtained using existing integration practices such as Web services, API, and RSS.”

(5) Smart. Personal intelligent agent software forms a major component of the Jafari model. “The intelligent agent would have the capability to learn, to think, to reason, and to intelligently act and react on behalf of an individual learner. With this, the next generation of e-learning environment software becomes expert on an individual user, serving the user according to his or her personal requirements and desires”. Daniel K. Schneider is skeptical about this. Intelligent agents were popular in the ITS literature and precisely failed because they take away control for the user. Agents that would just help dealing with information (not serving information), is plenty enough.

Jafari's research on smart learning environment and intelligent agents both from conceptual and technical perspectives let to the current R&D Epsilen Environment. The picture below both illustrates the "Jafari model" and the implementation.

Next-Generation E-Learning Environment

Integration of communities

Chatti (2007) referring to Wenger argues that learners are members in multiple knowledge communities including learning communities (LC), communities of practice (CoP) and communities of interest (CoI). Therefore, central to his definition of a PLE is the integration of communities.

Personal Learning Environments Loosely Joined, Source: http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspot.com

Google

Internet Companies such as Google do see the potential of such models. E.g. as of April 2007, Google offers an increasing amount of on-line tools, most of which can be used in an educational setting.

Google's Tools for your classroom page (Google for educators]) explicitly mentions various specialized search tools such as Book Search, Earth, Maps, Personalized Homepage, Web Search and then points to applications like Blogger, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, Picasa, SketchUp, Talk, Groups, News, Page Creator. Now using these tools in classroom doesn't make it a technically integrated environment. The question of who really needs something like an LMS for classroom teaching is another issue, but a future IT solution also of interest to higher education may be Google Apps Education Edition, an application that integrates some Google services. “Google Apps Education Edition is a broad IT solution that schools can use to bring communication and collaboration tools to the entire academic community for free. Google manages all the technology details, so you can focus your time, energy and budgets on teaching your kids.” [3], retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST). An other interesting bit is in the here.

There may be truth and a lot of future behind Powerful solutions. Zero investment. slogans. If you can have it for free and it works, why bother with administration that often makes life difficult for teachers and typical university portals that erase your data every few years or even after each terms? More importantly, several Google services can be integrated with existing IT systems through published extensibility APIs.

Building your own

Michele Martin, (retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST)) describes in some details how she constructed her own personal Learning Environment, mostly with three kinds of free tools:

  • Gathering Information
  • Processing Information
  • Acting on the Learning

[[image:|frame|none|Michele Martin's PLE]]

Martin's endevour is quite fascinating as it shows that there is a way of doing it. One problem was to find a cental aggregating tool. She chose Netvibes.

An other solution would be Protopage as described in the Join de dots: paint your own personal learning landscape presentation.

Discussion

Daniel K. Schneider doubts that any company will be able to "corner the market" for this in the very near future since there ought to be standards to exchange all the personal incorporated data from one system to another. On the other hand, since integration portals may just leverage existing popular applications, they do not need to deal with most of the data ...

There may be competition/solutions from several sides:

  • Existing "closed" portals like LMSs may increasingly open up to various web services (E.g. Moodle - ELGG or Moodle - Mediawiki integration modules.)
  • New educational integrator systems like something based on Jafari's model (outsourcing the integrator and the data)
  • Something in between like [e-Framework]
  • Global service providers like Google (or MS) that provide virtual portals around their own services.

One big question is to decide whether a PLE is a concept or a system. “The PLE wiki defines a PLE as systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning.I do not agree with this. A PLE is a concept, not a system. Different applications (especially web services) can be integrated and used as a PLE. So, I think a PLE is more SOA-based (although applications not always have to be integrated, they can also become combined). This would imply that a PLE is not the same LMS/VLE+Web 2.0. It's personalization, networking and collaborating. See my comments in a different blog entry.” (Wilfred Rubens, retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST)).

A next one is why replace current systems, that painfully found their way into our academic lifes. Jafari in one his talks argues that current campus system (including LMSs are not sticky, contrary to popular web 2.0 applications. There are several reasons, one of which is that these systems are not based based on fundamental needs a modern learner has, e.g. managing very different information and communication spaces as well as production tools.

Campus Portals according to Ali Jafari

Ron Lubensky (2006) beliefs that the success of PLEs (those which are independent of commercial VLEs) will depend on:

  1. the ease with which they can be implemented and used by learners
  2. interoperability
  3. the confidence that learners and institutional administrators have with them.
While some prescribe a vision for learning which promotes pedagogies consistent with social constructivism (Dalsgaard 2006), getting there is quite another matter. As with any paradigm shift, the biggest barrier to technological revolution lies in the political and commercial inertia of the status quo. Many commentators believe it can only occur through grass-roots effort which will bootstrap a new market. (This is what occurred with ePortfolios.)

Daniel K. Schneider can only agree with this.

Links

References

  • Attwell, Graham (2006). Personal Learning Environments, Blog-Entry.HTML, retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST).
  • Attwell, Graham (2007). Personal Learning Environments for creating, consuming, remixing and sharing, Blog-Entry. HTML, retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST).
  • Attwell Graham (2007), Personal Learning Environments - the future of eLearning?, eLearning Papers 2(1), ISSN 1887-1542, January 2007. PDF
  • Chatti, Mohamed Amine (2007). Personal Environments Loosely Joined, HTML, , retrieved 19:39, 25 April 2007 (MEST).
  • Jafari, Ali; Patricia McGee, and Colleen Carmean (2006). Managing Courses, Defining Learning: What Faculty, Students, and Administrators Want, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 4 (July/August 2006): 50-71. HTML.
  • Lubensky, Ron (2006). The present and future of Personal Learning Environments (PLE), Blog Entry,HTML,
  • van Harmelen, M. (2006). Personal Learning Environments. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'06), IEEE.
  • Vuorikari, R. (2005). Can personal digital knowledge artefacts' management and social networks enhance learning? European SchoolNet, EUN Consortium, Brussels. PDF.
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