In another post, I have described the way I see my personal learning environment. It is personal, since I have set it up myself. So naturally the biggest issue with the Wilson et.al (2006) core reading I have is: why would anybody think that they can design a PLE for me? It would immediately loose all personality.

In a sense, I was also offended by the article since many ideas presented there are echoing the seminal paper by Tim O'Reilly, What is Web 2.0 (O'Reilly, 2005), yet we find no reference at all to that paper.

Back to my PLE. It was the easiest thing in the world for me to plug in all the Edinburgh e-learning stuff. Simply add the URL of the Holyrood Park to my bookmarks, and from there, most of the time without an extra login I have access to all the other systems in use, including the VLE.

The Wilson reading sees VLEs in general as an example of 'dominant design', in my view, you can't really call VLEs a dominant design since there are many differences between VLEs, although you can see a convergence as they all have incorporated web 2.0 technologies in the past few years. Even WebCT has a wiki, although the way that is integrated (or rather bolted on) is rather crude. Some VLEs, like Moodle distinguish themselves from other products by explicitly stating that they support a specific pedagogy, constructivism in the case of Moodle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle). VLEs in for profit institutions are usually much stronger on statistics and management information (Kolowich 2010). One might say though that VLEs tend to have a sort of dominant architecture in that they were all designed to support a more or less traditional educational concept. They are added to a traditional mix of lectures and core readings. And most teachers use them for very basic tasks like uploading lecture slides. Sure, they have added all these features in response to the market, but what you get is over-featured applications that try to do too many things and, as usual, do nothing really quite good.

This is also recognizable in the IDEL setup. The VLE is basically used for two things: content pushing and online discussion. For the rest, other applications are preferred. I am starting to feel more comfortable using the discussion board, but more substantial posts go to my blog as well, where I have more of a sense of ownership (yes, there is a connection here with the portfolio discussion) since I know for sure that at the end of the course everything in the discussion boards will disappear, or at least become inaccessible to me.

To end my discussion of the Wilson reading: I checked two of the projects they mention in their article, Plex (http://www.bolton.ac.uk/IEC/EducationalSoftware/PLEX.aspx) and TenCompetence (http://www.tencompetence.org/web/guest). Both projects seem dead to me.

So again not a very good reading, sorry to mention it. The Downes article cited in Wilson (footnote 24) might have been a better choice, but then Downes is somewhat controversial. What struck me most about the article is the near absence of any pedagogy, the references to lifelong and lifewide (a new term for me, I know it as 'real world learning') felt almost obligatory.

Then it struck me that I had read two articles (Mott and Wiley, 2009 and Mott, 2010 earlier this year, one of which explicitly departs from a pedagogical point of view (Mot and Wiley, 2009), Bloom's 2 sigma problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem).

Mott and Wiley (2009) go on to show that the VLE is mainly used by teachers to 'increase the efficiency of the administrative tasks of instruction'. They see it as a missed opportunity that the VLE has not been used to innovate teaching methods. VLEs have three major shortcomings: (1) it imposes a student-throughput model, (2) the VLE does not afford learners the opportunity to contribute to the learning process, (3) the VLE is a walled garden, disconnected from the larger world. (2 and 3 can be recognized in the Wilson core reading.)

Mott and Wiley propose an alternative, which they call open learning network, which they see as a 'hybrid between the CMS (VLE) and the PLE. This is however only very sketchy worked out.

Finally, Mott and Wiley state that 'our assertions about the weaknesses of the CMS paradigm should also be taken as critiques of the predominant pedagogical model in higher education'.

One might also say that VLEs are used mostly for substituting administrative tasks, rather than as extensions, offering new opportunities.

Jen responded to this article:

>many thanks for these references, Johannes. I am intrigued by the author's claims that an open learning network represents something radically different from a learning management system - its imperatives would seem to be exactly the same (to manage and institutionalise - to striate in Bayne's terms? - student work). On the other hand, the notion that content, environments and discussions should be persistent (in the cloud) rather than trapped inside modules, does seem quite radical (in the context of an LMS/VLE).<

It's not radically different since it wants to marry both PLEs and VLEs. My point of view is that the PLE is mine and mine alone, something that I manage myself. And yes the persistence notion is rather radical and something I don't trust the university to take care of. Although I have raised the idea in 2001 that libraries could create repositories for (parts of) portfolios (Roes, 2001). To shamelessly quote myself:

"By taking a knowledge management approach to digital portfolios, these results can be shared over the Internet or, more likely, the intranet. This implies a new task for the library in the management and indexing of these student portfolios in such a way that they too can be integrated with other information resources offered by the library. In this sense, digital portfolios are an extension of the first domain identified -- digital libraries and digital learning environments -- but now include the intranet. The emphasis here is on the institution as a knowledge organization, and the integration of that knowledge with other information resources."

Oh yeah, I have also a PP, a personal portfolio: http://www.hroes.de/artindex.html

Steve Kolowich (2010), The For-Profit LMS Market, Inside Higher Ed, November 1, 2010, The For-Profit LMS Market, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/01/lms (Accessed November 3, 2010)

Jon Mott, David Wiley (2009), Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network, in education 15(2), http://www.ineducation.ca/article/open-learning-cms-and-open-learning-network (accessed October 27, 2010)

Jonathan Mott (2010), Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network, EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine 33(1), http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/EnvisioningthePostLMSEraTheOpe/199389 (accessed October 27, 2010)

Tim O'Reilly (2005), What Is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html (Accessed November 3, 2010)

Hans Roes (2001), Digital libraries and education: trends and opportunities, D-Lib Magazine, July / August 2001, http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july01/roes/07roes.html (Accessed November 3, 2010)

Wilson, S., Liber, O., Johnson, M., Beauvoir, P. Sharples, P. & Milligan, C. (2006). Personal Learning Environments: Challenging the dominant design of educational systems. TENC Project: Publications and Preprints. http://dspace.ou.nl/bitstream/1820/727/1/sw_ectel.pdf (Accessed October 25, 2010)