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This article presents a case-study of two distance learning courses, in order to address the question of universal adoption of mobile devices and applications by students, and the impact of these devices in personal learning environments (PLEs). First, a critical discussion of the value of these concepts in the current technological context was carried out, followed by an analysis of their impact on educational use, based on data collected in online courses on physics and statistics at Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University. The results indicated that all students have adopted mobile learning, and the make-up of an individual’s PLE depends more on the learning resources available rather than on gender or age. These findings can help provide more efficient ways to implement learning by connecting current social needs to learners’ mobile PLEs, particularly when flexibility of time and space are of utmost importance. Further studies at the Portuguese Open University will address a larger and more balanced sample of students across more course units.

The use of second-generation web technology (WEB2) in education is emphasising the role of social media as educational sources. Researchers that are analysing personal learning environments (Schaffert, Kalz, 2009; Dabbagh, Kitsantas, 2012), personal learning networks (Couros, 2010) suggest the importance of social media, although this emphasis is attributed to the collaborative interaction of learners. To comprehensively assess the potential of podcasts as social media in the creation of personal learning environments, personal learning networks, the research described in this article does not restrict the definition of podcasts as the potential of collaboration provided by social media. In this article, attention is directed towards the potential of podcasts in the creation of personal learning environment and personal learning networks. By using integrated information behaviour module analysis to determine if the students of Lithuanian higher education institutions value the potential of informal learning provided by podcasts. To determine if these technologies are used for the formation of personal learning environments, personal learning networks, a discussion group research was conducted. During the research the analysis of participant podcast usage showed there is interaction between media content used for recreation and media content used for formal and informal learning. This means that the participants of the research use podcasts to create personal learning environments. On the other hand, this interaction is minimal, created only by the learners and reasoned by the search of educational podcasts. The analysis of the experiences of the discussion participants revealed that the collaborative interaction between learners involved in the research in searching, sharing and using podcasts in the process of learning is not intensive, it is typically fragmented. This allows to point out that the communities that use podcasts for informal learning are not forming. This shows that the potential of podcasts in creating a learning network is not fulfilled, and that podcasts don’t inspire participatory learning.

This research makes a comparative analysis of the frequency of use of various ICT tools that 381 students in Education degrees and 218 Costa Rican teachers incorporate in their Personal Learning Environments (PLE) in order to search for information, generate content, and communicate. An ex post facto study was conducted using the survey method. The results revealed poor integration of technological resources into the PLEs of both groups, although it has been found that it is the students who use the greatest number of tools. It proposes the need to implement measures to enrich the PLEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lifelong learning, with the help of digital technology, possesses the capacity to offer individual significant advantages to individual learners. This paper examines both the diverse approaches to lifelong learning and the digital tools available to promote these strategies. The paper contains a review of some of the main articles pertaining to the fields of constructivism, digital technology, and the process of lifelong learning. Specifically, the authors intend to critically evaluate the utilization of rapidly developing digital technologies, such as computers, tablets, and mobile devices, within lifelong learning and their role as tools in promoting access to both practical and theoretical knowledge and in facilitating the communication of ideas within a global network, as per the constructivist approach. Hence, this article relies upon a specific definition of lifelong learning and an exploration of the notional foundation of what comprises lifelong learning and the environment in which their knowledge acquisition occurs. Thus, a framework for the present research is established wherein peer-reviewed studies concerning the use of social media by lifelong learners is explored, and extrapolating from the dual tenets of professional development and adult learning theory. Moreover, the authors additionally examine approaches to the notion of PLEs (personal learning environments) and PLNs (personal learning networks) as related to the selection of relevant lifelong learning strategies. The discussion is exemplified by cases ranging from video platforms to blogs and is simultaneously multidisciplinary and spanning diverse fields. Each example has applicability for lifelong learning and represents the characteristics of constructivism and its support within a web-based learning environment. It is thereby suggesting that effective and meaningful strategies supportive of the lifelong learning lifestyle can be achieved via well-designed PLEs and PLNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for conceptualizing the notion of personal learning environments in higher education from an explicit adult education perspective that emphasizes the realization, re-instrumentation, and integration of learning activity in the wider context of adult life. It discusses and re-interprets an existing proposal for modeling "the personal learner" on the basis of the Viable System Model in this context and provides an empirical illustration for the conceptual utility of such an approach for educational intervention work in higher education. The paper concludes that a careful redesign and reconfiguration of learning activity in formal educational settings is a necessary and important educational intervention goal in itself, allowing for expansive connections between specific forms of learning activity and the wider context of adult life. Such an approach treats participants as developing "adult learners" who gradually gain conscious control over their own modeling of learning activity, its flexible realization via personal learning projects, and their instrumentation via personal learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper demonstrated the use of the supervised Machine Learning (ML) for text classification to predict students' final course grades in a hybrid Advanced Statistics course and exhibited the potential of using ML classified messages to identify students at risk of course failure. We built three classification models with training data of 76,936 posts from two large online forums and applied the models to classify messages into statistics-related and non-statistics-related posts in a private Facebook group. Three ML algorithms were compared in terms of classification effectiveness and congruency with human coding. Students with more messages endorsed by two or more ML algorithms as statistics-related had higher final course grades. Students who failed the course also had significantly fewer messages endorsed by all three ML algorithms than those who passed. Results suggest that ML can be used for identifying students in need of support within the personal learning environment and for quality control of the large-scale educational data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article presents the normative, epistemological and techno-pedagogical foundation of the educational innovation process implemented by the Department of Humanities of the Santo Tomás University (Bucaramanga Section) that is aimed at improving and redefining the teaching-learning process from a virtual perspective, With which it is tried to strengthen the integral formation, to humanize the digital scenes and to promote the development of the investigative abilities like articulating axis of the knowledge to offer a personal learning environment that favors the students of the Institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National culture has been an influential framework for comparative and international research. However, current theories suggest that people and societies are rather more complex constructs than their cultural layer. This work is based on a previous study in which, when students from Spain were compared to German students, the former showed higher levels of identity with their blogs and learning impact. The current study is a step forward as it presents the differences in identity and learning impact in blogging between Spanish and Israeli student teachers and offers a mediation model in which the relationship between culture and learning is mediated by the identity factor. The results show that Spanish student teachers feel more identified with their blogs and thus perceive a greater learning impact. Accordingly, this work suggests that blogging could act as learning spaces that may raise students' identity with their learning products and their self-perceived learning impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Digital Education Review is the property of University of Barcelona, Virtual Teaching & Learning Research Group and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The nature of institutions is an important question for the Personal Learning Environment (PLE). Whilst the PLE has tended to focus on what is considered to be “non-institutional” technology like social software, most online tools today have a corporate/institutional foundation. How should educators position themselves with learners who have to negotiate different institutional and discursive contexts – whether within corporate social software, formal education, work or the family? Drawing on previous work focusing on how learners maintain personal coherence in organising learning between different contexts, institutional theory is used to revise the model of the learner as a ‘viable system’, which focuses on the dynamics of transactions that learners make with different institutional entities. Data from an online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course in acute cancer care is analysed to show how learner transactions indicate constraints bearing upon learners both from their professional context and from their formal educational study. The pattern of learner engagement suggests that the interaction of constraints creates the conditions to motivate in-depth contribution to the course forums. This finding leads us to suggest a rethink of pedagogy within the PLE, and a broader consideration of institutional and other constraints in educational dynamics.

Based on a language for modelling personal learning environments (PLE) of higher education students that we have developed (Felder, sous presse), this explorative research aims to evaluate the potential of PLE models of students generated by the researcher as an intermediate object between the student and himself (reflexivity). The Personal Learning Environment Modelling Language (MEPA) supported by a generic model of the PLE allows students’ verbalized representations of their PLE to be visually objectified. A longitudinal study of 15 students validated the expressiveness of these PLE models and evaluated the reflexive potential of the models on students. Approached from the perspective of conceptual change theory, the study presented in this paper highlights the heuristic potential of models. The results show that students recognize the intelligibility, plausibility and fruitfulness of the modelling and that for some students, the objectification of their PLE has generated conceptual changes. This use of PLE models by learners could help to develop their autonomy, particularly by allowing them to recognize their person-plus.

The multiplicity of digital devices implemented in the working space of the university is facing an ever-growing offer, especially on the Web, of services and tools that deeply alter the individual and collective relationships to information and knowledge. To study the logic and the strategies involved in the student’s Personal Learning Environment composition and layout, we present an approach based on document practices considered among their information and communication technologies uses. We rely on a quantitative study conducted with students from a French university, combined with a qualitative approach conducted with teachers, to characterize the recomposition movements of the PLE. We particularly emphasize their hybridity and highlight negotiation processes underlying. This approach aims to question both the factual elements as well as the intentions and representations.

Aim. The purpose of the research is to depict how talented students create their personal learning environment. The author of that paper shows a difference that has occurred thanks to the comparison between the manner in which average students and talented students build their personal learning environment. Methods. The author has conducted quantitative research, by making a survey. The surveys were carried out among fifty talented students. This paper focuses on the presentation of their opinions. The respondents presented how they constructed their personal learning environment. Additionally, they expressed their viewpoints about their digital competences. Results. The analysis shows that talented students are familiar with the latest digital tools. It allows them to design their personal learning space effectively. They can collect and process information profitably. They are also keen to share their knowledge with other participants of an educational process via the Internet, using some complex and practical devices. Moreover, talented students prefer discussing educational problems with other students online. They use some appropriate tools, such as chat rooms and social networking services. According to the research, the author can conclude that talented students are able to build and improve their digital learning space very well. They seem to create their personal learning environment functionally and consciously. Conclusions. Talented learners use advanced searching strategies, methods of collecting and storing information, and also teamwork tools. It is particular that they are autonomous learners but they also like sharing knowledge with other learners. The level of information competences of the talented students is quite high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online learning inherently affords collaborative learning opportunities for participating students. Open distance learning (ODL) institutions typically accommodate students from diverse educational backgrounds with disparate levels of access to technological resources. The mere existence of an online learning platform does not necessarily equate to student access to collaborative learning opportunities. A qualitative study investigated how diverse students in an online learning module collaborated with peers in furthering their learning project at a large ODL university. It emerges that students engage in various formal and informal collaborative learning activities which constitute the creation of personal learning environments (PLEs). PLEs demonstrate the role of student agency as students coordinate their options. Social capital theory shows how different types of social ties in PLEs provide for bonding and bridging social capital; the combination of which serves the learning project by providing for both strong ties in supportive relationships between students and weak ties with knowledge generation capabilities between previously unacquainted students. The results can assist online learning practitioners who wish to promote beneficial collaborative learning opportunities among their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) enable lifelong learning and make competences visible in education and professional life. This paper illuminates how to design an online learning process that enables deep learning through PLEs based upon our study of a scaffolding process supported by Web 2.0 tools. Professional student teachers developed their own blogs as PLEs, and we collected data from five student teacher groups. We employed the DIANA pedagogical model to design a dialogical, collaborative, and authentic learning process before comparing its activities against the activities of the five-stage model for scaffolding designed for online learning processes. The results indicate that the DIANA model includes the elements of the five-stage model, and it appears that teacher scaffolding is particularly important in student PLEs. These findings provide insights to other practitioners seeking to design and implement online learning processes that are based on collaborative knowledge construction utilizing students' Personal Learning Environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of RIED: Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Educacion a Distancia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research assesses the results of electronic platforms implementation in the process of teaching English at the University and effectiveness of this technology in facilitating English language learning. The paper reports the outcomes of the research targeted to evaluate the enforcement of the electronic platform Rosetta Stone (RS) and its role in terms of academic achievement. For collecting data, we used combined procedures including quantitative as well as qualitative. The quantitative method incorporated students’ responses to statements by means of a paper-based questionnaire. The qualitative element comprised interviews, which the researchers had with their students. Students shared their points of view about their work with RS. Results suggest that the attitude of students towards application of e-learning platform can be taken into consideration as an important component for effective enhancement of the academic program. Special attention is given to personal learning environment (PLE). PLE is considered to be of great importance for developing teaching focused on individual learners. The current study proves integration of electronic platforms with language material can support students in language learning. It gives learners good chances to choose educational content taking into consideration their professional development and the level of foreign language skills and abilities.

The personalization of professional and additional education requires the complementation of the formal education by the possibilities of informal pedagogical interaction, based on the social media services and the massive open distant courses. The possibilities of personal education sphere (PES) as the integrative medium of formal and informal education are considered.