Personal Learning Environments Shifting the Locus of Control

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Personal Learning EnvironmentsShifting the Locus
of Control

• Oleg Liber
• CETIS, University of Bolton

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Changing

• Technologies
• Students
• Pedagogies
• Environment
• Institutions
• State education system
• Global education

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Before VLEs

• Technology
• Web, ftp, gopher, email, newsgroups
• Little interoperation
• No learner management
• Enthusiast driven
• Students
• Mainly young, homogenous
• Mainly on campus
• Pedagogy
• Formal, face to face delivery

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Age of the VLE

• Technology
• Content delivery
• Discussion groups
• MCQ
• Limited learning management
• Invented by enthusiasts
• Students
• More part-time
• Access
• Widening participation
• Pedagogy
• More distance learning
• Greater support requirements

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VLE approaches

• Technical approaches
• Website plus database (BB, WebCT )
• Rich client (Colloquia)
• Organisational issues
• University as ISP
• Big System management model
• Constrain diversity

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Why VLEs have succeeded

• Not disruptive innovation
• Easily adopted to support existing
  classroom/course paradigm
• Widely incorporated
• Which benefits proven?
• Pedagogic
• Cost
• Access

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Post VLE

• New developments since 1996
• Mobile phones, SMS, camera phone
• Digital photography, Flickr
• Blogs, RSS
• MP3 players, media players, PDAs
• iTunes, podcasting
• Pen drives, smart drives, SD cards
• Instant messaging
• Internet gaming
• Bandwidth!

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Institutional concerns

• Traditionally institutions provide technology
• Classrooms, labs, library etc.
• Since 1990s institutions are ISPs
• Email address, file store, homepages, records
• Assume students have no technology
• Also eportfolio hosting, VLE/LMS, content,
  services
• Now constraining technological use by students
• IM, P2P, Blogs, MP3, mobile phones, PDA
• Staff and student skills training
• Huge variety
• But modern students need to use multiple systems

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Technology Moodle Eportfolio system Course
catalogue Content Authentication and authorisation
College A Knowledge Teaching
University B Knowledge Teaching
Technology WebCT Eportfolio system Course
catalogue Content Authentication and authorisation
University C Knowledge Teaching
Technology Fronter Eportfolio system Course
catalogue Content Authentication and authorisation
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Issues for eLearning

• Technological
• adaptable to changing technologies
• Interoperability
• SOA
• Institutional
• Changing nature of service provision
• Pedagogic
• Ownership and creative use of technical system by
  teachers and students
• Shifting locus of control

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Service
Service
College A Knowledge Teaching Resources
Service
Technology PLE Eportfolio Content Relationship Man
agement Tools
University B Knowledge Teaching Resources
University C Knowledge Teaching Resources
Service
Service
Service
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Post VLE Personal Learning Environments

• Students
• Mobile, learn anywhere
• Technologically aware, capable
• Multiple courses, formal/informal
• Technology
• Personal
• Interoperable, standards based
• Extensible, service-oriented
• Institutions
• Service based
• Technology requirements
• Flexible courses
• Learner centred

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Before

• Course built at institution
• Consumed by learner
• Learners are managed
• VLEs provide no management tools for learners
• Learners fit into course
• Can only choose elective modules
• Learners belong to institution
• One institution at a time is typical
• Do customers shop only at one shop?

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After

• Course aggregated by learner
• From several sources
• Content, peers, support, teaching
• Elements provided by institution
• Content, peers, support, teaching, certification
• Learners aggregate/manage elements
• Courses are customised to learner
• Learners are free agents
• shop at several shops

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PLE implications

• Student have own email address, PLE, e-portfolio
• Commercial ISP provides core services
• Also web-services (instrumentation), resources
• State provides
• Services, resources, learning space, information
• University provides
• Student support
• Specialised web services
• Content, teaching

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JISC funded Reference Model project

• DfES
• A collaborative approach to personalised
  learning activities (DfES e- Strategy summary
  p.3)
• http//www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/doc
  s/e-strategysummary.pdf
• Philosophy of eLearning and PLEs
• Why technology? What caused VLEs? What caused
  eLearning?
• Use cases scenarios for use of PLE
• What will the future be like?
• Reference model defining the scope of PLEs
• Prototypes
• Examples of possible PLEs

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• AOLInstantMessenger
• iChat
• MSNMessenger
• Colloquia
• Groove
• ELGG
• Outlook
• Chandler
• AppleMail
• Eudora
• Thunderbird
• iCal
• Sunbird
• Shrook
• NetNewsWire
• Blogger
• Drupal

• Wordpress
• XJournal
• Google
• Amazon
• 43Things
• Flickr
• Furl
• Technorati
• del.icio.us
• http//www.writeboard.com/
• SynchroEdit
• Flock
• WiredReach
• NetVibes
• eyeOS
• Writely
• SuprGlu
• BaseCamp
• TaDaList

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Prototypes

• Desktop application
• Resources create, get, post and organise
• Bookmarks, feeds, other sources
• People find, meet, collaborate, communicate,
  organise
• Activities receive, design, create, participate
• Instrumentation pluggable web-services
• Portal application
• Mimics desktop prototype

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Importance of standards

• Resources RSS, Atom, Content packages, SCORM.
• People FOAF, LIP, ePortfolio
• Activities Learning Design
• Instrumentation XMPP, WSDL, SOAP

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Thanks for listening!

• http//www.cetis.ac.uk/members/ple