Personal Learning Environments

We have come to the end of session 2 for my course in Learning in Digital Contexts.  In this session we explored what it means to create personal learning environments (PLE).  In all honesty, I always thought about using social media tools to create personal learning networks (PLN).  I came to the realization that I had already created a personal learning environment upon completing a PLE diagram.

Datoo, S. (CC) 2013.

In Clint’s blog post, he quoted, “the tools, artefacts, processes, and physical connections that allow learners to control and manage their learning” (Couros, 2010, p. 125).  I strongly believe that learners should be able to derive long-term benefits from their investment in learning, no matter the context. 

Learners vary in age, culture, gender, nationality as well as in their drive and motivational (or other) factors that drive them back into continuing education.  Creating a learner-centred environment can tailor to the needs of my learners.  However, in larger classrooms, it is a challenge to personalize learning.  Technology has created many learning opportunities that can go beyond the classroom walls. 

Steve Wheeler created a slide share presentation on Learning Management Systems and the personal learning environment: A bridge in the cloud? This presentation compares LMS’s with PLE’s.  Steve mentions that LMS’s are good for secure organization, storage and delivery of content, but it’s not good for opening up content or personalized learning”.  This slide share presentation was created in 2010.  Educators are beginning to open up learning by integrated social media and Web 2 tools into education and are leveraging LMS's to do so.  LMS’s are also providing ways to create personalized learning.  For example, the educational institution I work at uses the Desire2Learn LMS.  We can embed twitter feeds and make Google docs available as a resource or allow students to collaborate from within the LMS…this to me is integrated and seamless learning where students are not required to go from site to site to retrieve information and collaborate.  Furthermore, this LMS allows us to personalize learning by using release conditions.  If students receive below 70% on a quiz, instructors can provide more resources to help students master their learning.  This is just one example of using release conditions to create personalized learning paths. 

Instructors and instructional designers however, design how they make use of an LMS.  So I can see how Steve Wheeler also mentions that "institutions that use LMS are in danger of turning the Web back into a funnel" (Wheeler, 2010). How technology is being used is defined by educators, it could used as simply as sharing a bunch of PowerPoint presentations, and that too, without voice over!  If educators cannot use LMS’s for their purpose, which is learning, they should not be using it at all as they are not adding any value to student success.

Personalized learning is what PLE’s are all about.  There are so many tools that allow us to create our own PLE’s that is geared towards our personal learning styles.  Graham mentions that PLE “recognizes the role of the individual in organising their own learning.  Moreover, the pressures of a PLE are based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts and situations and will not be provided by a single learning provider (Attwell, 2007). Learning management systems provide an array of tools, which allow for communication, collaboration, reflective practice and 24/7 access to information of which can be delivered in text or multimedia formats.  Together with social media and Web 2 tools, LMS’s in my opinion can be truly powerful.

Attwell, G. (2007). The Personal Learning Environments: the furture of eLearning? eLearning Papers, 2(1), 1-8. Retrieved from http://www.elearningeuropa.info/files/media/media11561.pdf

Lalonde, C. (2012, August 10). Twitter, PLEs, and PLNs [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://clintlalonde.net/2012/08/10/twitter-ples-and-plns/