PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS TO FOSTER LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS

This article explores how future learning systems can support students in their learning activities in order to be more efficient. These tools focus on a learner-centered and self-organized learning style and should be used in an academic context in particular and for life-long learning in general. Due to this user-orientation these tools can also called Personal Learning Environments. In the first section the theoretical basis of learning situations or settings and their support with Personal Learning Environments are discussed. The second part presents the results of an empirical survey conducted by the author and explores the requirements and wishes of a Personal Learning Environment, along with experiences made with the Learning Management Systems currently offered by the universities. A special focus is on the potential of web 2.0 tools to support learning activities. All in all, 670 students took part in this survey. The paper concludes that there are already systems available that can solve the shortcomings of existing LMS and describes accompanying measures to introduce a Personal Learning Environment at the university of the author.