Making it rich and personal: meeting institutional challenges from next generation learning environments

The understanding that personal learning environments provide a more realistic and workable perspective of learners’ interactions with and use of technology has gained widespread acceptance across many of the communities interested in learning and teaching technologies within higher education. However in universities the service which normally purchases and deploys technology infrastructure is typically, and understandable, risk-averse, the more so, because the consequences of expensive decisions about infrastructure will stay with the organisations for many years. Furthermore across the broader academic community the awareness of and familiarity with technologies in support of learning may be varied. In this context work to innovate the learning environment will require considerable team effort and collective commitment. This paper presents a case study account of institutional processes harnessed to establish a universal personal learning environment fit for the 21st century. The challenges encountered were consequential of our working definition of a learning environment which went beyond simple implementation – in our experience the requirements became summarised as ‘its more than a system, it’s a mindset’. As well as deploying technology ‘fit for purpose’ we were seeking to create an environment which could play an integral and catalytic part in the university’s role of enabling transformative education. Our ambitions and aspirations derive from evidence in the literature, for example, van Harmelen on personal learning environments (2006), Downes on e-learning 2.0 (2005) and the recent report by Bradwell for Demos on the Edgeless University (2009). We have also drawn on evidence of our recent and current performance; gauged by institutional benchmarking and an extensive student survey. The paper will present and analyse this qualitative and quantitative data. We will provide an account and analysis of our progress to achieve change, the methods we used, problems encountered and the decisions we made on the way.