• Progetti & Gruppi di lavoro
• Calcolo scientifico
• E-Infrastructure for E-Science
• Cloud Computing
• Learning Infrastructure
• E-Identity
  • Blog
  • Personal Learning Environment
  • e-Portfolio
  • e-Identity Management
  • Contatto
• Gruppo di lavoro – ICT Law
• Gruppo di lavoro – Mail
• Gruppo di lavoro – Media
• Gruppo di lavoro – Rete
• Gruppo di lavoro – Aquisti IT
• Gruppo di lavoro – Sicurezza
• Gruppo di lavoro – Storage

The Personal Learning Environment

Wikipedia says: Personal Learning Environments (PLE) are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to:

• set their own learning goals
• manage their learning, both content and process
• communicate with others in the process of learning

We believe that a PLE is very beneficial for a learner if it provides a set of useful tools and if it can be used over an unlimited period of time. SWITCH currently develops the PLE concept together with swiss universities, and plans to implement it step by step in the future.

Collected Ideas for a PLE

Data management:

• persistent storage of learning material provided by the university (scripts, recorded lectures, online courses, books, research papers)
• persistent storage of all the learners self-produced material (notes, reports, exposés, working plans, annotations)
• life-long access to gradebooks, diploma, certificates - securely signed by the university and thus forgery-proof
• interoperable with popular cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive or SkyDrive

Competence management:

• tool to maintain, visualise and reflect personal competence profile
• self-assessment and profiling tools

Learning support:

• time planning tool
• flash cards for drill and practice
• e-portfolio

Collaboration:

• sharing of selected material (documents, flash cards, etc)
• support for group work - synchronous and asynchronous
• integration with popular communication services like Skype, Google Hangout, Twitter

Social network:

• the learner gets a life long e-mail address
• the contact to fellow students and teachers is maintained even when the learner has left the university
• integration with popular social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing

Job search:

• enhanced job search based on personal profile
• job applications and CV generation with presentation e-portfolio

Access:

• physical access to buildings, rooms, assessments, mensa menus with electronic ID
• access to web applications
• ubiquitous wireless network connectivity

Architecture:

• the PLE is a lightweight platform that basically provides authentication and profile management (the e-identity)
• tools can easily be attached to the PLE platform