Implementing and utilizing personal learning environments (PLEs) in educational settings is a challenging and complex process that requires the intensive involvement of both teachers and students. There are several important issues that need to be considered in order to build PLEs and utilize them as effective learning tools in educational settings. Among other issues, the implementation of PLEs in a way that can support the student’s control and improve the teacher’s practices is a key factor affecting the adoption of them by students and teachers. In this paper, we propose a framework for developing PLEs in educational settings in order to support teachers and students to negotiate control and then analyze the perceptions of teachers regarding the impact of the framework on their teaching practices.

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A FRAMEWORK TO SUPPORT THE NEGOTIATION OF
CONTROL BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS IN WEB-
BASED PLEs
Ebrahim Rahimi, Jan Van den Berg, Wim Veen

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The main purpose of PLE is to transfer the control
of learning process to students.
Student’s control is linked to:
• the student’s capacity to make choices and impose those choices on their learning,
•(perceived) possibilities to manipulate their learning environments (Dron, 2006; Buchem, 2012)

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transactional control mapped to transactional distance (Dron, 2007)
Control as a continuum

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A practical problem in the educational settings
Lack of a mechanism to choose, evaluate and discover the learning benefits of
web technologies and integrate them into the educational process
The permanent and extensive contact of
students with technology
Unceasing development of technology
+
Great opportunities for
students to negotiate control

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A digital activity space which provides the students with technological
choices to:
•Work with different tools and technologies to support their heterogeneous
learning needs
•Discover the leaning potential of new technologies
• Share their learning experiences and good practices with their peers and
teachers
Requirements:

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SER model-Seeding, Evolution, Reseeding (adopted from DePaula et al., 2001)
Seeding phase:
•Providing students with an initial set of web tools and technologies
Evolution phase:
• The teacher encourage and support students to evolve their PLEs .
Reseeding phase: Obtaining the students’ good practices and their preferred learning tools
and resources

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Developing a Prototype to implement the
solution

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Social Hub (Seeding phase)

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Personal Part (Evolution phase)

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Figure 5. Supporting Reseeding phase by considering students opinion about a learning artifact
Reseeding Phase

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Evaluation of the Prototype
Interviewing 10 teachers in the context of a secondary school
How do teachers perceive the PLE prototype as
a tool to support the negotiation of control?

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Figure 6: the perceived impacts of the PLEprototype on teachers' teaching process
RESULT
S

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Conclusion
:
• Teachers need to know students’ technological preferences and the ways they work and learn with
technology. Therefore a PLE platform should provides teachers with this information in order to implement a
student-centric learning approach.
• In order to assist students and teachers to identify relevant and valuable web tools, clear criteria
to assess the learning benefits of web tools is required.