Personal Learning Environments : A study among Higher Education students ’ designs

INTRODUCTIONThe problemPersonal Learning Environments (PLEs), that is, an individual learner's online resource management platform, seems to have an increasingly significant role to play as a learning organizational tool, particularly in areas of metacognitive skills like Self-regulated learning. From 2004 (Leslie, 2008), several models and prototypes have been proposed, remarking the benefits of Web 2.0 cloud-based resources. The key problem is what to select and how to organize them. Several proposals of PLE design have dealt with this problem, many from a theoretical point of view. In this study, we gave a group of Higher Education students the opportunity and the needed competencies to organize their own PLE, and thereafter, we considered three questions: what, what for and how.The questionsThe first question is about technology: the concept of a PLE is at the basis of this decision. We can use a complex and self-sufficient tool with every resource included and with a more technological approach, or we can use an open environment based on the free use of Web 2.0 services.The second question examines the main reason why we consider the use of PLEs to be helpful. Of course, from an administrative and management point of view, Learning Management Systems (LMS) are a more suitable solution for learning institutions. We believe that PLEs are valuable in that they support a self-regulated learning process. While other tools, such as e-Portfolios, are beneficial as they support students to record their own learning pathways and thus make changes if need be. PLEs force students to organize their learning from the outset.The third question is a more practical one: what elements do we have to include in a PLE and how to organize them.While the experimental study collects information from a group of students at the University of Barcelona as a pilot approach, we begin positioning ourselves in a conceptual framework for these three questions.CONCEPTUAL APPROACHWe begin by conceptualizing a PLE in order to address two main lines of debate: a technological approach vs. a pedagogical approach and the coexistence of PLEs and LMSs.Learning from historyThe acronym PLE appeared in November 2004 (Severance, Hardin & Whyte 2008), in the title of one of the sessions of the 2004 JISC/CETIS Conference. Brown (2010) identifies the starting date of the PLE approach in the year 2001, when NIMLE (Northern Ireland Integrated Managed Learning Environment) was set up. Taraghi, Ebner and Schaffert (2009) cite Olivier and Liber (2001) as one of the first to describe the idea of a PLE.We can consider a PLE as an in-fashion concept when several special issues about it were launched from well-known publications in 2008: eLearning Papers (Ehlers & Carneiro 2008) or Interactive Learning Environments (Liber & Johnson 2008).However, the concept, and the words, Personal Learning Environment, have a longer history. According to Google tool Ngrams (http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/), the expression Personal learning environment was cited in 1965. We have found that a publication in 1969 of the University of Washington affirmed:Thus, a knowledge of the abilities, interests, and aspirations of each individual pupil would appear to be a prerequisite for constructing his/her personal learning environment (1969, p.41).Even the year before, in 1968, the Association for Student Teaching (1968, p.137) also made a reference to the expression PLE: ...which can be set up by a professional colleague who shares experiences in a personal learning environment.So, we can thus assume, that the idea of a personalized environment for learning comes from the ideas about the individualization and personalization of teaching at the end of the sixties. But the technological approach begins with the 21st century. If we consider that the Web existed at that moment more than 10 years, and computers and other technologies more than 20, why have PLE's not appeared before? …