Using Social Media to Engage Students in Strategic Design of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)

Abstract

Personal Learning Environments or PLEs enable the creation of personal and social learning spaces to support learner-centered and personalized learning experiences empowering students to direct their own learning and develop selfregulated learning skills. PLEs are built bottom-up, by the student, starting with personal goals, private information management, and individual knowledge construction; progressing to socially mediated knowledge and networked learning. A PLE can be entirely controlled and adapted by a student providing an engaging learning experience; however students must acquire and apply knowledge management and self-regulatory skills to create effective PLEs. This presentation will describe how social media can be used as an educational platform for supporting the strategic design of PLEs. A three-level framework that faculty can use to scaffold student self-regulated learning while creating PLEs and related research findings will also be provided.