Personal information management and learning

Students today collect and organise information on a daily basis in their PCs, laptops and mobiles, creating a personal information archive that contains items related to their learning tasks. Personal information management (PIM) is the activities users perform in order to organise the information items in their personal information spaces (e.g., desktops, folders and e-mails). PIM is a new digital literacy which plays a central role when students work on their assignments; therefore, it is important to understand PIM activities in the learning context. The purpose of this article is to raise the main issues in PIM activities within the learning process, to suggest a PIM and learning conceptual framework and to present preliminary findings from the pilot research.