What is a PLE?
PLE is an acronym for "Personalized Learning Environment"; while it may look like yet another edugeekspeak acronym, the fact is, it represents and requires a philosophical nad paradigmatic shift in our approach not simply to learning, but how Higher Education functions and relates to the individual learner. For too long, the focus has been on the institution and its needs instead of the needs of learners. Great ideas emerge in this field each year only to die into cliche as they morph to fit into traditional institutional practice; PLE's require that the paradigm change. DesCartes is dead, so is Humbolt--I am sure that it is safe to move on.
In the traditional model, the institution views itself as the sole provider of learning for one of its students (the flaw of this assumption is visible if one stops to consider what would happen if one walked about many institutions and asked people what learners got out of the institution and what they learned. You would hear lists of the curriculum, an ambituous school might even give you a list of syllabi, the PR departments would inundate you with tag lines full of non-direcctive pronouns, and savvy administrators would give you a lesson on assessment. It's a nice dancec, but the only people who know about the real learning are the learners themselves.
For those who teach in higher ed like myself, you have had those astounding moments, usually with students who have since departed from your class, when someone tells you what they've learned. It is usually shocking because it was not your intent to focus on that, but that learner found a need for it, contextualized it in their life and learning locker and developed their ideas from it. (There's an amusing scene at the opening of B. F. Skinner's Walden Two which relays a similar scene.) I once quoted a line from a work in the opening lecture of a literature class; four years later, a person came up to me and told me how that quote had changed their lives. The fact is, when we are in a learning mode, we are not passive, we are actively seeking.
PLE's build from the above ideas and apply them to the use of technology for learning. The beauty of the tangled web we call the internet is that space and time break down. Once upon a time, Higher Education--based on the fact that it had the faculty, the library, the ability to purchase the academic journals--had a geographic stranglehold as the cathedral to which one went for learning. As the institution possessed the content, the content ruled the learning process. We students who entered such, had our minds and our notebooks to hold that learning in. However, in the universe we currently live in; neither of those are necessary. The technology means that students can gain content from multiple sources and store it on devices which not only allow easy organization, but can actually search themselves. (I have the most disorganized hard drive in the history of the universe, but it is not a problem, I simply go to SpotLight and type the term.)
The way in which technology is currently used in Higher Education reflects the values of the traditional views which institutions have. (I love the traditions of Higher Education as much as anyone, it is a great collection of symbols with which to open discussion and share ideas, but that's all it is, a tradition is not a rule; the most basic logic courses hope that learners understand that arguing to tradition is a fallacy of relevance.) Let's consider the current status of e-Learning. Many who advocate PLE's focus their wrath on Course Management Systems as harmful to learning--I won't be shy with that myself, but I would add ERP systems into the cross-hairs as well.
Course Management Systems fail to renounce the metaphor in that they take the traditional room bound course (anyone ready to join me in running screaming from the building?) and recreate an electronic version. The opponents to such practices are horrified at the idea of people learning without their all wise presence before them. If it is not read in a room and from paper, then there's no way it's true intricacies can be grasped. While we're at it, let's ban poet's from the Republic and insist that heavier than air flight is impossible. The astounding part of the strength of this reaction is that it is based in the slightest change of modalities. If you want to debate whether Hamlet says sullied or solid flesh, you have a great topic and can probe some true intellectual vision--if you ignore the rest of the play, you've missed something wonderful.
In the traditional model, the institution views itself as the sole provider of learning for one of its students (the flaw of this assumption is visible if one stops to consider what would happen if one walked about many institutions and asked people what learners got out of the institution and what they learned. You would hear lists of the curriculum, an ambituous school might even give you a list of syllabi, the PR departments would inundate you with tag lines full of non-direcctive pronouns, and savvy administrators would give you a lesson on assessment. It's a nice dancec, but the only people who know about the real learning are the learners themselves.
For those who teach in higher ed like myself, you have had those astounding moments, usually with students who have since departed from your class, when someone tells you what they've learned. It is usually shocking because it was not your intent to focus on that, but that learner found a need for it, contextualized it in their life and learning locker and developed their ideas from it. (There's an amusing scene at the opening of B. F. Skinner's Walden Two which relays a similar scene.) I once quoted a line from a work in the opening lecture of a literature class; four years later, a person came up to me and told me how that quote had changed their lives. The fact is, when we are in a learning mode, we are not passive, we are actively seeking.
PLE's build from the above ideas and apply them to the use of technology for learning. The beauty of the tangled web we call the internet is that space and time break down. Once upon a time, Higher Education--based on the fact that it had the faculty, the library, the ability to purchase the academic journals--had a geographic stranglehold as the cathedral to which one went for learning. As the institution possessed the content, the content ruled the learning process. We students who entered such, had our minds and our notebooks to hold that learning in. However, in the universe we currently live in; neither of those are necessary. The technology means that students can gain content from multiple sources and store it on devices which not only allow easy organization, but can actually search themselves. (I have the most disorganized hard drive in the history of the universe, but it is not a problem, I simply go to SpotLight and type the term.)
The way in which technology is currently used in Higher Education reflects the values of the traditional views which institutions have. (I love the traditions of Higher Education as much as anyone, it is a great collection of symbols with which to open discussion and share ideas, but that's all it is, a tradition is not a rule; the most basic logic courses hope that learners understand that arguing to tradition is a fallacy of relevance.) Let's consider the current status of e-Learning. Many who advocate PLE's focus their wrath on Course Management Systems as harmful to learning--I won't be shy with that myself, but I would add ERP systems into the cross-hairs as well.
Course Management Systems fail to renounce the metaphor in that they take the traditional room bound course (anyone ready to join me in running screaming from the building?) and recreate an electronic version. The opponents to such practices are horrified at the idea of people learning without their all wise presence before them. If it is not read in a room and from paper, then there's no way it's true intricacies can be grasped. While we're at it, let's ban poet's from the Republic and insist that heavier than air flight is impossible. The astounding part of the strength of this reaction is that it is based in the slightest change of modalities. If you want to debate whether Hamlet says sullied or solid flesh, you have a great topic and can probe some true intellectual vision--if you ignore the rest of the play, you've missed something wonderful.
posted by Bob Clougherty | 2:43 PM
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