My Personal Learning Environment
The term personal learning environment (PLE) describes the tools, communities, and services that constitute the individual educational platforms that learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals. PLEs represent a shift away from the model in which students consume information through independent channels such as the library, a textbook, or an LMS, moving instead to a model where students draw connections from a growing matrix of resources that they select and organize. (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2009).
Now, why would I personally need a PLE? One reason is the potential this pedagogical approach has for integrating formal and informal learning using social media (Dabbagh, N. & Kitsantas, A., 2012). I’m already doing lots of informal learning with social media, but I haven’t really integrated that to my formal studies.
Here I’m going to present some ideas on what my idea of a PLE could be like.
The Dashboard used in WordPress actually gives a good foundation for a PLE, and what I’m describing here could be achieved by a similar system with some modifications.
Students have this environment from day 1, learning through the creation posts, linking to other sources, commenting and reflecting. This environment is also used for all administrative and time management needs (enrollment, calendar etc.) A lot of the data would be pre-populated from databases (course info etc.), but everything could be edited by the teacher when need be (adding assignments, making announcements etc.). The learner is automatically granted access to everything he needs according to his metadata in enrollment details. All the course info and materials can be found here, and this is where the student also makes assignment submissions. You can also make posts about general stuff and generate a portfolio like in a blog. A real-time environment for discussions can also be found here.
A learning environment like this, combining the personal/social and content/administrative, is not yet implemented institution wide, but the technology to achieve this is already there.
References:
Dabbagh, N. & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096751611000467
EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) (2009). The seven things you should know about…
Personal Learning Environments. http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf
Synapsifier in the Sky 