Key ideas

Study of PLE design, lit review of motivation and presence, some statistics from learners

Difference between Virtual Learning Environment and PLE - VLE is controlled by an institution.

• have to be able to negotiate the Web (not a power-free environment) autonomously
• find right information, access resources, critical assessment of credibility
• active in learning by producing in a variety of formats
• communicating and collaborating with others in new ways
• creativity and innovative thinking
• competent using ICT
• flexible, adaptible
• motivated to take on new challenges

Downes (2009): these skills and competencies will develop while engaging in online communication, or via challenging feedback or recommendations through PLE system

• Affective aspect (Picard, 2004, Kop, 2010, Zaharias & Poylymenakou, 2009; Jones & Issroff, 2004)

Dron & Anderson 2007 differentiate learning in

• groups (motivation/presence highest)
• networks (open informal network - motivation is lower)
• collectives (even lower motivation - connections between people in the form of tags)

Illusion of non-mediation (ie. something that works like if it had been in real life).

Garrison, et al 2000: Deep meaningful learning from three forms of presence:

• cognitive presence
  • certain level of depth in educational process
• social presence
• teacher presence (in formal environment - could be replaced by “knowledgeable others” on the web?)

Attwell, 2006 provides a variety of models

• comparisons with traditional learning
• benchmarking models
• product evaluations
• performance evaluations
• program and policy evaluations
• studies of metadata
• more complex all encompassing design-based research models (Bannan-Ritland 2009)

Surveying “super users” (people who use advanced Internet tools and technologies in an educational environment) on use of existing tools, applications, systems, preferences in learning

• exploration of literature
• usability testing of Plearn (feedback on mockups)
• comparison of learning with and without Plearn in 3 case studies

Announced on OLDaily, sent out to members of PLE mailing list etc. 204 surveys completed. Mainly highly educated, very comfortable with technology.

Mechanisms that help them understand and combine information:

• when I can discuss it with others, screencasts and slidecasts
• when I can organize it so it makes sense
• when it is posed as a challenge
• when I take notes and rework/process them
• when someone tweets a useful link and someone else tweets a link to a related story
• when I can combine and check information flexibly
• when it's blogged or op-ed'd
• when I can do something with it
• when it is written simply without a lot of extra words and jargon
• Cmap, visual approaches
• solitude and reflection