Kalz, Marco

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This short comment reflects on a critical account of educational tech- nology and makes reference to the chapter by Vieritz et al. about the use of widget bundles for formal learning in higher education

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Open Universiteit www.ou.nl PLE in formal education: challenges for openness andcontrolCitation for published version (APA):Kalz, M. (2014). PLE in formal education: challenges for openness and control. In S. Kroop, A. Mikroyannidis, &M. Wolpers (Eds.), Responsive Open Learning Environments: Outcomes of Research from the ROLE Project(pp. 226-228). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02399-1_9DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-02399-1_9Document status and date:Published: 05/11/2014Document Version:Peer reviewed versionDocument license:CC BY-NC-SAPlease check the document version of this publication:• A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences betweenthe submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for thefinal version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website.• The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review.• The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.Link to publicationGeneral rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain• You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal.If the publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license above, pleasefollow below link for the End User Agreement:https://www.ou.nl/taverne-agreementTake down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at:pure-support@ou.nlproviding details and we will investigate your claim.Downloaded from https://research.ou.nl/ on date: 12 Oct. 2022PLE in formal education: challenges for openness and control Marco Kalz Open University of the Netherlands, P.O. Box 2960, 6401 DL Heerlen, The Netherlands marco.kalz@ou.nl  Abstract. This short comment reflects about a critical account of educational technology and makes reference to the chapter by Vieritz et al. about the use of widget bundles for formal learning in higher education.  1 Introduction Personal Learning Environments (PLE) have been intensively dis-cussed since the introduction of the concept without an agreement about their definition and concrete focus. In its early development phase PLE have been introduced as learning technologies under the control of the learner [1]. Later we have described a PLE as a learning environment in which learners one the one hand actively integrate dis-tributed digital information, resources and contacts, on the other hand document learning progress and learning outcomes based on standards [2]. While the original concept of the PLE has been introduced as a counter-concept for teacher/instructor-prepared learning environments like Learning Management Systems (LMS) nowadays this perception of a PLE seems to have moved into a direction in which all technology that enlarges the landscape of standard learning technology can be re-garded as a PLE. The authors of the chapter have presented three case studies of widg-et bundles that function as an enrichment of the traditional technology-supported learning environments at these three institutions. These im-plementations provide interesting directions for a transition between learning technologies that are designed according to fixed curricula and prepared content towards more flexible environments. Especially the activity recommender might offer an interesting direction to support self-organized learning. But flexibility alone is not the core of a PLE.  Selwyn calls for a critical account of educational technology that takes into account the societal intertwining of educational technology on the micro-and macro-level and the study of learning technology in dimensions of “power, control, conflict and resistance” [3]. We cannot disconnect this wider discussion and reflection from the implementa-tion level. In this sense, learners need to be able to actively (co-)design their learning environment to make it a personal one. This is the im-portant difference between adaptivity and adaptability of a learning environment [4]. While adaptivity can be designed completely accord-ing to rules of teachers or the designer of a piece of learning technolo-gy, the adaptability enables a learner to design the learning environ-ment according to individual needs. In the context of educational insti-tutions and formal learning this leads to a number of challenges. The authors have argued that pre-designed widget bundles have been used to not confuse users and provide them with too many choices. But this leads to the contradiction that widget bundles are a result of a de-sign process of teachers without giving learners any influence on their technology-enhanced learning environment. We have described this contradiction as a “competence continuum” consisting of a number of core skills to be able to use a PLE effectively for self-directed learning [5]. The biggest challenge is to come to a setup that also enables learn-ers without a high level of self-directedness and IT skills to slowly get used to a more open and flexible learning environment. Pre-defined spaces that can slowly be extended are one option for this issue, the other option would be to make available a limited number of widgets that users try first and then decide about their use and usefulness. And this leads to a related challenge: Since PLE are dynamic envi-ronments that grow according to the context and needs of the learner their evaluation needs to take into account a temporal perspective con-sisting of a number of snapshots of the environment and their impact on enabling self-directed learning processes. It is essential for the further development of PLE and their impact in education that the community develops evaluation frameworks that can systematically handle the complexity of evaluating a personal environment that changes its status dynamically over time and can thus fulfill different purposes.  One possible theoretical framework for developing such an evalua-tion approach is the adaptive structuration theory: „The act of bringing the rules and resources from an advanced information technology or other structural source into action is termed structuration. Structuration is the process by which social structures (whatever their sources) are produced and reproduced in social life” [6]. Thus can this theory build a good foundation to analyse the interrelation between social structures and technological structures developed in a PLE and the dimensions pinpointed by Selwyn.   References 1. van Harmelen, M.: Personal Learning Environments. In: Kinshuk, Koper, R., Kommers, P., Kirschner, P., Sampson, D.G., Didderen, W. (Eds) (ed.) Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’06). pp. 815–816 IEEE Computer Society, Kerkrade, The Netherlands (2006). 2. Schaffert, S., Kalz, M.: Persönliche Lernumgebungen: Grundlagen, Möglich-keiten und Herausforderungen eines neuen Konzeptes. In: Wilbers, K. and Ho-henstein, A. (eds.) Handbuch E-Learning. pp. 1–24 Deutscher Wirtschaftsdienst (Wolters Kluwer Deutschland), Cologne, Germany (2008). 3. Selwyn, N.: Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of edu-cational technology. J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 26, 65–73 (2010). 4. Oppermann, R., & Rasher, R. (1997). Adaptability and adaptivity in learning systems. Knowledge Transfer, 2, 173-179. 5. Wild, J., Wild, F., Kalz, M., Specht, M., & Hofer, M. (2009). The MUPPLE competence continuum. In F. Wild, M. Kalz, M. Palmér & D. Müller (Eds.), Proceedings of 2nd Workshop Mash-Up Personal Learning Envrionments (MUPPLE'09). Workshop in conjunction with 4th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2009): Synergy of Disciplines (pp. 80-88). September, 29, 2009, Nice, France: CEUR workshop proceedings, http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-506 6.  DeSanctis, G., & Poole, M. S. (1994). Capturing the complexity in advanced technology use: Adaptive structuration theory. Organization science, 5(2), 121-147.     

PLE in formal education: challenges for openness and control

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PLE in formal education: challenges for openness and control

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