Page Operations
Browse SpaceRavensbourne Learner Integration
About the Project
The Learner project is a JISC
-funded project. Ravensbourne College is grateful to the JISC for their generous support of the project.
For in depth details about the project, please consult the Project Proposal and the Project Plan.
This is the home space for the JISC-funded Learner Integration at Ravensbourne (LIN-R) project. We have developed a demonstrator of making the institution's elearning platforms more useful to learners who increasingly wish to make use of their own technology and extra institutional services as well as institutional ones. This involves asking questions such as: To what extent does the concept of a PLE (Personal Learning Environment) resonate with learners? Is it just a three-letter acronym, doomed to be discarded when a more fashionable technology catches the eye of the elearning industry? What is the relationship between learner-as-learner, and learner-as-user? How personal can a personal learning environment be that is scaffolded and constructed - and how useful to the learner?
The concept of the personal learning environment(PLE), at least in outline, is one that sits quite naturally with practice-based education's values of extreme social-constructivism and personalisation. Through our work on the JISC-funded Designs on Learning(DoL) project we have begun to evolve a more substantial view of what might make up a PLE. In the DoL project, we explored learning designs to support students in bridging the gap between learning activity and professional activity. We focused on blogging as a supporting technology for both academic reflection, and online reputation management. Through this, we found that some students already had elaborated online presences, in which social networking predominated. For these students, extra-institutional online activity constituted more significant engagement than either the institutional VLE, or the project-supplied blogs. For us, this is the PLE: a learning environment that is assembled through learner choice.
The overall aim of the represented here has been to identify and apply approaches that apply user owned technology to support learners' development more systematically and encourage them to increasingly reflect upon and integrate their learning. Also to do this within a context that is meaningful and can support them in making sense of their different learning experiences in relation to their own developing professional identity and direction. Specifically this is being put into practice by developing a framework for students to develop online profiles within the context of Personal and Professional Development Units. This is designed to encourage students to progressively record the development of their work and working process, reflect on this and their learning, and to share and contextualise this with peers, staff and wider communities.
Through this project the team have developed a model and guidance for the integration of user owned technology into the context of learning and the learner's experience of the institution. This also highlights the opportunities to structure aspects of learning and teaching, notably reflection, assessment and public representation as potentially mutually supportive rather than conflicting.
This project has involved developing our understanding of what a PLE can mean (particularly in the context of practice based education) and how it can best be supported by tools and models from social software and "Web 2.0". Most notably we have identified a range of issues through implementation including technical, pedagogical, social and particularly institutional ones and drawn conclusions that are relevant to the sustainability of the project, the institution and increasingly to other practitioners and the sector.
Project Outputs
A range of outputs that are of interest to the community.
Presentations
Learning Designs for Constructivist Pedadgogy
Learning 2.0
From VLE to PLE.
E-Learning and Me
Steal This Presentation
A look at some of the legal issues surrounding the use of social software in higher education.
Representation of Overall Learning Design
E-Learning in context. Transition from private to public learning in the context of social software and communities of practice
Papers
- Listening to Learners on the PLE — We report on our findings so far from the JISC-funded Learner Integration at Ravensbourne (LIN-R) project. This project is funded under the user-owned technologies strand of the elearning programme, and is a demonstrator of making the institution's elearning platforms more useful to learners who increasingly wish to make use of their own technology and extra institutional services as well as institutional ones. This involves asking questions such as: To what extent does the notional PLE (Personal Learning Environment) resonate with learners? Is it just a three-letter acronym, doomed to be discarded when a more fashionable technology catches the eye of the elearning industry? What is the relationship between learner-as-learner, and learner-as-user? How personal can a personal learning environment be that is scaffolded and constructed – and how useful to the learner?
- Ravensbourne Students, Staff, and Technology — Most staff and students use email for core communications, the Moodle VLE as a repository for project briefs, the College wiki for technical troubleshooting when directed to it, and Internet search engines and Wikipedia as first port of call for research. Whilst most students are using Facebook & Myspace as social tools, staff are using it less and as with instant messaging, these are used much more often for social than for learning-related activities. Staff and students use a range of specialist desktop software in the production of their work. They do not substitute these for online SaaS versions.
- Reflections on the PLE — The 'personal learning environment' or PLE is a fashionable, though somewhat mercurial, concept. What started out as a re-imagining of elearning along Web 2.0 lines in a way that would empower learners, has for some become a 'Facebook for institutions'. Learner empowerment through the application of two key Web 2.0 principles, 'invent nothing' and 'small pieces loosely joined', appears to be more relevant than building another monolithic institutional application for a variety of reasons. Among the more important of these are: the opportunity to integrate competencies from outside of traditional education into a cohesive learning environment; mediating the inter and extra institutional boundaries or broadening learning activity into extra institutional communities of practice; promoting choice, flexibility and personalisation for learners, broadening tool selection, and integrating user owned technology effectively into learning. Appealing though this concept is, it is easy to get overcome with technological excitement, misplacing the pedagogic context. Learners may erect significant boundaries between learning and social space, and may well not conceptualise their online activities in a way that is easily re-aggregated into a personal learning environment. In addition, the technological, and socio-technical, barriers to such aggregation can easily be underestimated. We present both the outline of a pedagogy for learning 2.0, and a case study of a learning 2.0 project in practice, showing how the project was experienced, and how some of the challenges were overcome. This is relevant to researchers considering the PLE concept, and to practitioners who are looking to exploit social software in learning and teaching.
Resources
Guides
- Tips on developing an effective online presence
- Example of personal space used for web portfolio
- Demonstration page
- Guide for developing wiki personal spaces
- Social Stack tools matrix
- Short Presentations on Social Software Tools
Bookmarks
The 10 most recent bookmarks in Ravensbourne Learner Integration
Blogs
Guides
- Tips on developing an effective online presence
- Example of personal space used for web portfolio
- Demonstration page
- Guide for developing wiki personal spaces
- Social Stack tools matrix
- Short Presentations on Social Software Tools
Bookmarks
