Personal Learning Environments are getting closer
09-November-2005
permalink comments (1) forum (1) email thisI have a contract as evaluator of the JISC elearning programme. Its a pretty mind boggling programme, embracing over 100 projects divided into different strands and actions. I find it hard to keep an overview of the project, despite the hard work of the folks running the programme web site.
Occasionally a project does grab my attention. The one which I am excited about at the moment is the Personal Learning Environments project. Its very nice to see they have set up a blog site for the project.
Here's a short description of what they are up to:
" The last five years have seen a major uptake of VLEs by colleges and universities. The vast majority of these are large, institutional systems, which are predominantly course based providing support for content distribution, discussion and assessment, mainly through proprietary tools. There are several problems with this approach of which two are of most concern.
VLEs are not easily customised to suit the needs and preferences of individuals
As learners move between institutions, they may need to learn the interfaces to different VLEs.
An alternative approach would be to locate a large amount of VLE functionality with the learner either as a desktop application or an independently hosted portal. Institutions would still provide content via repositories, undertake assessment and so on, but learners would interact with these using their personal systems (Personal Learning Environment), comprising their preferred tools and ways of working."
I think this is a big deal in that it transfers ownership to the learner. Instead of the learner logging in to a university based system the leaner is able to integrate multiple contexts and sources of learning and develop their own 'learning mix'. Moreover this promises to be of use to the many, many thousands of learners who are not registered with educational institutions. It may even force institutions to reflect on their role in supporting - rather than defining - learning and knowledge.
Technorati Tags: e-learning, e-portfolios, education and training research, eportfolio, non formal learning
Extended text for this entry:
Oh - quick aside. For ages I have been on about the idea of a project to get every lecturer in a university to record their favourite two lectures. And repeat that the next year. With a faculty of 800 after two years that would be 3200 lectures available after two years. Not only would it be a cheap way of creating learning resources but would be the best quality measure a university could take. To get students to go - rather than simply listen on their iPod - the lecturers would have to produce some added value - rather than tired old note reading stuff.
I also have been prone to saying the learning environment of the future will look a bit like iTunes. Now i see stanford university has brought both my ideas together, launching 'Stanford on iTunes' in conjunction with Apple. Cool.
1 Replies (comments)
1 PLE
I really like the idea of the PLE - I can see lots of opportunities. One little point is that the URL that you have to the project blog seems to be the same one as to the summary. Are they meant to be different?Linking and trackbacks
When linking to this weblog entry, please use the 'permalink', which is http://www.knownet.com/writing/weblogs/Graham_Attwell/entries/0502696145
