1. +
Personal Learning Environments:
interface between physical & virtual
spaces
Blog:
www.e4innovation.com Gráinne Conole, The Open University, UK
SKG First Forum
La Trobe University, 28/05/09

2. Grimscote, Northamptonshire
UK, February 2009

3. + Overarching questions
 What is personalisation?
 What is the relationship between Government rhetoric and
actual practice?
 How can technologies support personalisation?
 What is the relationship between technologies, physical and
virtual spaces and pedagogy?

4. +
Personalisation: Definition
 To endow with personal or individual qualities of characteristics
 To design or produce (something) to meet someone’s individual
requirements

5. + Origins and quotes
 Hopkins
 Reaction against traditional education: limitations of space, constraints
of the curriculum, lack of innovation
 Challenge “To connect the possibility of truly personalised pedagogy
with the promise of more flexible, responsive, and transparent systems
of organisation”
 Miliband
 Excellence and equity; flexibility with accountability and a personal
focus
 Leadbeater
 Learners actively engaged in setting their own targets, devising their
own learning plans and choosing from a range of ways to learn
 Järvelä
 “How could the collaborative process in personalised learning be
regulated in order to favour the emergence of these types of
interactions? How can technology be designed to enhance personalised
learning environments in ways that increase the possibilities that such
rich interactions occur?”
OECD, 2006

6. +
From PLE to PDE…
What does your Personal Digital Environment consist of?
What do you do (types of activity)?
How do you do it (what tools do you use)?
Where do you do it (locations and contexts)?
What does it say about you?

7. + My Personal Digital Learning Environment
Learning, research, work
Information
Writing (Word)
Finding (Google)
Blogging (Wordpress)
Presenting (Powerpoint)
Recording (Audacity)
Communication
Writing (Email)
Talking (Mobile &skype)
Texting (SMS &twitter)
Learning (Audio conferencing)
Presenting (Video conferencing)
Hardware: Laptop, iphone, ipod, portable hard disk, camera, flip video camera
Where: Dining room table, hot desking space, hotel rooms, airport lounges

8. Function Pre 2005 Now..
Text/Data Word, Excel Google docs
Presentation Powerpoint Slideshare,
Shift from information to podcasts, YouTube
communication
Finding info Google Google+, RSS
feeds
Managing info Bibliographic tools, Social
repositories, e- bookmarking,
journals blogs, wikis
Personal Co-evolution of tools and
management Microsoft exchange practice
Shared calenders
& to do lists
Communication Email, forums, chat Skype, elluminate,
social networking
Visualisation Mindmaps Compendium,
mind42, cohere
Conole, forthcoming in Lee and McLoughan

9. + Convergence
What are the characteristics of new technologies?
What are the characteristics of good pedagogy?
Can you map one to the other?

10. + Converging practices
Modern technologies Modern pedagogy
 Web 2.0 practices  From individual to social
 Location aware technologies  Contextualised and situated
 Adaptation &customisation
 Personalisedlearning
 Second life/immersive worlds
 Experiential learning
 Google it!
 Inquiry learning
 Badges, World of warcraft
 Peer learning
 User generated content
 Open Educational Resources
 Blogging, peer critique
 Reflection
 Cloud computing
 Distributed cognition

11. + Intersections
Furniture
Equipment
Light
Layout
Properties of Noise
learning spaces
Affordances of new Characteristics of
technologies good pedagogy
Adaptive Personalised
Contextual Situative
Networked Social
Immersive Experiential
Collective Reflective

12. + Buzz words
What words do you associated with the concept of personalisation?

13. + Policy rhetoric buzz words
 Niche  Individual
 Ownership  Learner centered
 Creative  Adaptive
 Community  Flexible
 Evolving  Self improving
 Empowerment  Empowering
 Individualism  Equitable
 Inclusive
 Adaptable

14. + Questions
 How is personalisation instantiated in Australian policy
rhetoric?
 How does this translate into funding support and educational
initiatives?
 Is there evidence of a change in practice (general and/or
specifically because of educational interventions?)

15. + Learner entitlement framework
Personalised learning which reflects learners’ interests, preferred approaches,
abilities and choices, and tailored access to materials and content BECTA, UK

16. + Actual practice: Learning 2.0
IPTS, 2008

17. + Value

18. + 7 dimensions of Personal Learning
1. Development of key skills
2. Improvement of student
learner skills
3. Encourage learning through
motivation
4. Learning environments for
collaborative learning
5. New models of assessment
6. Technology as personal,
cognitive and social tools
7. Teachers are key
Järvelä (2006)

19. + 1. Key skills
Focus Examples
 Students taught to use  WISE project – (SecondReiff
conceptual and factual Aachen School of Architecture)
knowledge in purposeful Authentic real-time modeling
activities in authentic environment in Second Life for
environments Architecture students
 Ancient Spaces – (British
Columbia) students move in a
virtual world, to get new insight
into the subject matter (Ancient
Spaces)

20. + 2. Learner skills
Focus Projects
 Improvement of student learner  Personal Inquiry Project –
skills development of inquiry-based
learning skills for students to
enhanced their understanding
of Science
 Mundo des estrellas – young
people in hospitals, interactive
gaming, life swapping and
sharing of experience

21. + 3. Motivation
Focus Examples
 Encourage learning through  Multiple delivery channels and
building motivation media: Content on iTunes,
podcasts and YouTube videos
as alternatives to text, student
generated content
 Notschool – virtual home
schooling for disaffected
children

22. + 4.Collaboration
Focus Examples
 Designing new learning  CSCL pedagogical patterns –
environments for collaborative Jigsaw, ArgueGraph, Concept
learning Grid script
 LeMill – teacher sharing and
collaboration, social tagging of
resources
 Wlker’sWikinomics –
collaborative co-construction of
understanding of Economics

23. + 5. Assessment
Focus Example
 Devising new models of  REAP project – distillation of
assessment good practice in assessment
into a set of guiding principles
 Utilization of technologies to
support diagnostic, formative
and summative assessment, as
well as peer assessment

24. + 6. Appropriation
Focus Examples
 The use of technology as a  SCHOME – a rich multimedia
personal, cognitive and social environment, focus is gifted
tool students, an open pedagogy
approach
 Pebblepad: e-Portfolio, a
“Personal Learning System”

25. + 7. Support
Focus Example
 Remembering that teachers are  OU Learning Design Initiative –
key range of tools, methods and
approaches to support the
learning design process
 Olnet – global network to
support researchers and users
of Open Educational Resources

26. + The VLE/LMS is dead!

28. Loosely coupled
Student
controlled
Personalised Institutional
tools tools
Institutional
controlled
Integrated systems

29. + Designing for personalisation
 Need for new approaches to design for learning
 Foregrounding characteristics of personalisation
 Utilising the affordances of new technologies
Open Personalised
 Transferable concept and  Transfer between Government
meaning rhetoric and practice
 Open source, open services,  Two-way dialogue, two-way
open educational resources learning
 Explicit  Tailored, contextualized
 Shareable  Building cumulatively
 Adaptable  Individualized
 Repurposed  Reused for different purposes

30. Internet
Radio
1
2 3
TV MA MA
MA
+ b c
a
Smart
Mobile

31. + A mediating layer Mediating artifacts
Lesson plans
Mediating Step by step guides
artifacts Online tools
Pedagogical patterns
“Expert other”
Learning Activity
Designer Creates Has an Design
or an OER
inherent
User
Can we develop new innovative mediating artifacts?
How can we make the design more explicit and sharable?
Vygotsky

32. +Personlised design

33. + Design, use, reuse
Deposits
OER
Creates
Designer
Design Deposits
Quiz + beginners route
Uses
Learner A
OER Quiz + advanced route
Chooses Learner B Uses
Design
Repurposes
Tutor & deposits

34. Prior designs
Process design New designs
& resources
Clouds in
Cloudworks
OER repositories
New OER
& designs
Pedagogical
Patterns

35. + Final thoughts
 What does personalisation mean in a technology-enhanced
environment?
 How do we take account of a digital divide that is ever narrower
but deeper?
 What new digital literacy skills will learners and teachers need ?
 True personalisation will require a radical rethinking of the
curriculum,
 Personalisation challenges existing norms about assessment
 Key challenge is to produce new pedagogical models which marry
the affordances of personalisation with the best affordances of
technologies
 There is a blurring of the boundaries of formal and informal
education; what is the role of personalised learning across these
contexts?