Cloud services within a ROLE-enabled Personal Learning Environment

The ROLE project (Responsive Open Learning Environments) is focused on the next generation of Personal Learning Environments (PLE). In this paper, we first describe the engineering process used to create either a new widget bundle, a group of applications or service widgets. The widgets integrated in a ROLE PLE consist of two cloud-based services, a social networking and a mind-mapping tool, where learners can perform and collaborate on learning activities. We also modified other widgets to create a complete learning experience. The whole platform is running on a cloudcomputing infrastructure and one of the services is using a cloud-based database. Additionally, we describe the initial experiences from using this cloud education environment in Galileo University, Guatemala, in a web-based course with students from three different Latin-American countries. We measured emotional aspects, motivation, usability and attitudes towards the environment. The results demonstrated the readiness of cloud-based education solutions, and how ROLE can bring together such an environment from a PLE perspective

Language design for a personal learning environment design language

Approaching technology-enhanced learning from the perspective of a learner, we foster the idea of learning environment design, learner interactions, and tool interoperability. In this paper, we shortly summarize the motivation for our personal learning environment approach and describe the development of a domain-specific language for this purpose as well as its realization in practice. Consequently, we examine our learning environment design language according to its lexis and syntax, the semantics behind it, and pragmatical aspects within a first prototypic implementation. Finally, we discuss strengths, problematic aspects, and open issues of our approach

Making it Rich and Personal: crafting an institutional personal learning environment

Many of the communities interested in learning and teaching technologies within higher education now accept the view that a conception of personal learning environments provides a the most realistic and workable perspective of learners’ interactions with and use of technology. This view may not be reflected in the behaviour of those parts of a university which normally purchase and deploy technology infrastructure. These departments or services are slow to change because they are typically, and understandably, risk-averse; the more so, because the consequences of expensive decisions about infrastructure will stay with the organisation for many years. Furthermore across the broader (less technically or educationally informed) 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 that could play an integral and catalytic part in the university’s role of enabling transformative education. Our ambitions and aspirations were derived from evidence in the literature. We also drew on evidence of recent and current performance in the university; gauged by institutional benchmarking and an extensive student survey. The paper presents and analyses this qualitative and quantitative data. We 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

Student Personal Learning Environment Interview Protocol

This interview protocol was used in a research study, “Community College Student and Faculty Information Needs and Information Seeking,” at Queensborough Community College, 2013-14

Cloud services, interoperability and analytics within a ROLE-enabled personal learning environment

The ROLE project (Responsive Open Learning Environments, EU 7th Framework Programme, grant agreement no.: 231396, 2009-2013) was focused on the next generation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). A ROLE PLE is a bundle of interoperating widgets - often realised as cloud services - used for teaching and learning. In this paper, we first describe the creation of new ROLE widgets and widget bundles at Galileo University, Guatemala, within a cloud-based infrastructure. We introduce an initial architecture for cloud interoperability services including the means for collecting interaction data as needed for learning analytics. Furthermore, we describe the newly implemented widgets, namely a social networking tool, a mind-mapping tool and an online document editor, as well as the modification of existing widgets. The newly created and modified widgets have been combined in two different bundles that have been evaluated in two web-based courses at Galileo University, with participants from three different Latin-American countries. We measured emotional aspects, motivation, usability and attitudes towards the environment. The results demonstrated the readiness of cloud-based education solutions, and how ROLE can bring together such an environment from a PLE perspective

Personal Learning Environment

Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) have become popular in higher education in recent years due to their ability to provide additional and flexible solutions for students and researchers. However, the limitations of VLEs have led to the development of a new generation of VLE – the Personal Learning Environment (PLE). PLEs avoid these limitations and have new features that allow students to control and develop new applications, such as Web 2.0 applications and social networks. Whilst PLEs have resolved some of the drawbacks of VLEs, it is argued that PLEs also have greater potential to cover a wider range of aspects. This paper presents a proactive context-aware architecture for PLE supporting two major objectives: lifelong access and learner-centric study, covering both traditional formal (institution-based) and informal (private, non-institution-based) academic learning. Bayesian Networks are graphical modeling tools that have been used for modeling uncertain knowledge. Moreover, BN has been used in this research to implement the proposed architecture

Rich and personal revisited: translating ambitions for an institutional personal learning environment into a reality

Is it possible to create an institutional personal learning environment? This question has triggered considerable debate amongst those concerned with implementing learning and teaching technologies within higher education, Rapid technological change is necessarily accompanied by matched evolution of individual practice amongst users. At universities, students arrive with a mix of sophisticated and naïve approaches to using technology in everyday life which can be shaped and harnessed to support learning. To respond to the changing capabilities and demands of available technology, the University of Southampton designed and is implementing a rich holistic learning environment radically different from the VLEs which gained widespread usage since the late 1990s. In the initial scoping of the environment, explanations of the proposed system were qualified: “its more than a system, it’s a mind-set”. The suggestion is that the power and value of the institutional personal learning environment resides in the ‘technology affordances’ which enable users to customise and personalise the system in a socially useful and educationally constructive manner. There are many different ways to remove the barriers to learning, some of which are not necessarily directly ‘educational’ or ‘instructional’. This paper considers the foundations and emergence of personal learning environments and the interplay of ambitions and requirements needed to support learning in a university context. It goes on to make a case for the creation of a seemingly paradoxical embodiment – an “Institutional Personal Learning Environment (iPLE). It considers emerging understandings of the role of ‘digital literacies’ and their associated challenges to universities - the role and challenges of ‘scholarly literacies in a digital age’. Presenting a case study of implementing the Southampton Learning Environment, this paper analyses the underlying rationale of the emerging system. It evaluates the architecture of the system to explain how it provides an institutional personal learning environment. It presents and reviews the first cycle implementation (due to go live in August 2011) from a pedagogic perspective assessing the technology affordances of the system. Finally it re-evaluates the evidence to consider whether it has indeed been possible to create an institutional learning environment that is also a personal learning environment

Learning based on a Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

En este artículo se ofrecen los resultados obtenidos de la evaluación de un “Entorno Personal de Aprendizaje” (PLE) para conocer sus potencialidades y eficacia. El objetivo es analizar si los alumnos son capaces de aprender a través del entorno telemático diseñado. MÉTODO. Para este estudio entendemos que la técnica más idónea es una prueba escrita (pretest-postest) en la que se formulan diferentes preguntas teniendo en cuenta la taxonomía de Bloom: recordar, comprender, aplicar y analizar. El pretest se administró al inicio de una acción formativa en el entorno construido y una vez finalizada, cuatro semanas después se pasó el postest. Ambos instrumentos tienen 30 ítems, las mismas preguntas con diferente orden. El estudio se realizó a través de los usuarios o receptores potenciales, que en este caso fueron alumnos del grado de maestro de las universidades de Córdoba, País Vasco y Sevilla. RESULTADOS. Se han establecido varias hipótesis y para el análisis, se comprobó si había diferencias significativas entre el pretest y el postest y se estableció el contraste entre ellas aplicando la t de Student. Aunque no hay diferencias significativas desde un punto de vista estadístico, nos hemos encontrados que la media de errores cometidos inicialmente era superior a los cometidos al finalizar la experiencia. DISCUSIÓN. Los hallazgos concluyen que los alumnos participantes en la experiencia avalan la significatividad del entorno iPLE para el aprendizaje así como sus posibilidades en la formación universitari