The impact of a mobile personal learning environment in different educational contexts

The emergence and application of information and communication technologies in educational contexts imply changes in the tools used to teach and learn. However, this use does not guarantee the success of such processes. For instance, learning management systems are very popular but also very focused on the institution, which means that they cannot take into account all learning that happens beyond the institution throughout learners’ lives. Personal learning environments (PLEs) and mobile technologies can be a solution to support such lifelong learning, but what happens in them should be taken into account by the institution. This paper presents a service-based framework to make this type of interaction possible, the communication of mobile PLEs with the institutional learning platforms. The framework has been implemented as an Android solution and tested by students and teachers. From these tests, it can be seen that the definition of a mobile PLE is possible and its use increases students’ motivation.