The last five years have seen a major uptake of VLEs by colleges and universities. The vast majority of these are large, institutional systems, which are predominantly course based providing support for content distribution, discussion and assessment, mainly through proprietary tools. There are several problems with this approach of which two are of most concern.
- VLEs are not easily customised to suit the needs and preferences of individuals.
- As learners move between institutions, they may need to learn the interfaces to different VLEs.
An alternative approach would be to locate a large amount of VLE functionality with the learner either as a desktop application or an independently hosted portal. Institutions would still provide content via repositories, undertake assessment and so on, but learners would interact with these using their personal systems (Personal Learning Environment), comprising their preferred tools and ways of working.
The PLE project team at CETIS is currently working on developing the definition, scope and a reference model for PLEs.
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Posted in the personal learning environments blog
