Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

As we move further into our graduate class on Web 2.0 Based Learning and Performance, it is evident that the plethora of social media tools are utilized by students in different ways for different learning results...even if they do not realize it.

The research article "Teens and Social Media: A Case Study of High School Students’, Informal Learning Practices and Trajectories" (SMSociety, July 2018) Bagdy, Dennen, Rutledge, Rowlett & Burnick, is a study of how 37 high school students use social media platforms and networks.  One of the students in the study was planning to go into the military.  And although she said she uses Pinterest to collect pinboards on what to expect in basic training (in addition to hairstyle and makeup), she "considers these to be planning activities", and does not consider Pinterest a social learning tool.  However, the study notes "it is clear she is actively learning by cultivating these collections of online learning materials."

In another research article titled "Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning" (Internet and Higher Education 15 (2012 3-8) Dabbagh and Kistsantas, the authors researched how learning through the various social media platforms has become very self-motivated, autonomous and informal in the college educational setting.  They noted that although most colleges and universities still rely on traditional course and learning management systmes (CMS/LMS), students today are using social media to create informal Personal Learning Environments (PLE) or Personal Learning Networks (PLN) to self-manage their educational goals.

Years ago, students would rely on lunch-time discussions, study groups or student organizations for peer support.  But today, especially during the pandemic when most universities have transitioned classes to online, students are using social media even more to both connect, and self-manage, their academic lives.  

Self-regulated learning is the student's ability to independently self-motivate and direct their behavioral processes to increase goal attainment.  It was defined in the article as a 3-phase cyclic model including 1) forethought (personal goal setting and effects of self beliefs) 2) performance phase (student engages behaviors to achieve goals, and 3) self-reflection (self-monitoring of outcomes).  The article proposes a 3-step pedagogical framework to meet these self-regulated goals:  personal information management, social interaction/collaboration and information aggregation.

In phase 1, instructors can encourage use of social media tools such as blogs to help students engage in self-regulated learning. In phase 2 (social interaction/collaboration), instructions can encourage social media use to collaborate and share learning which should facilitate self-monitoring. Lastly, in phase 3,  students compile and management their work from collaborating, and access their learning through self-monitoring.

In this way, students can use social media tools to help personalize their learning, and create their own PLEs to help facilitate their increasingly self-directed and self-motivated learning.