Sean Dowling presented on using technology-enhanced personal learning environments (PLEs) to support mobile learning. Some key points: 1. Lifelong learning involves both formal and informal learning throughout one's life to improve knowledge and skills. Informal learning occurs through everyday experiences and is often mobile in nature. 2. Learning trajectories can be disrupted when learners are mobile due to competing demands, limited access to existing knowledge, and poor recall of original experiences. 3. PLEs, consisting of customized web-based tools, services, and resources, can help address these challenges by allowing learners to record experiences for later reflection, access recommendations and collaborations, and receive notifications.

1. Using technology-enhanced PLEs to
support mobile learning
Sean Dowling
Prof. Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sánchez
Prof. Declan O’ Sullivan

2. About the Presenter
• Almost 20 years experience in education;
• Worked as an EFL teacher in Japan, Thailand and the Middle East;
• Last 10 years – educational technologist in the Middle East;
• Currently Marie Curie Research Fellow in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
• Working on PhD as part of the European Commission funded EDUWORKS
project.

3. EDUWORKS
• 11 PhD candidates, 2 Post-Doc researchers, 3-year project

4. Presentation Overview
• Lifelong learning (LLL), informal learning, mobile learning
• Learning trajectories and transitions
• Challenges to maintaining learning trajectories
• Using technology-enhanced personal learning environments (PLEs) to
respond to the challenges

5. Lifelong learning
All learning activity undertaken throughout life,
with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and
competencies within a personal, civic, social
and/or employment-related perspective.
(European Commission, 2001)

6. Lifelong learning
• formal / non-formal / informal
• “interact and overlap with each other both conceptually and temporally”
(Schugurensky & Myers, 2003, p. 331)
(LIFE Center: Stevens, R. Bransford, J. & Stevens, A., 2005)

7. Informal learning
• Incidental learning that results from everyday
experiences occurring in a wide variety of
contexts.
• Mobile in nature

8. Mobile Learning
• Learning that occurs in different locations, with
different people, interwoven with other activities,
using different technologies and dispersed over
time. (Sharples et al, 2009)
• Multi-dimensional
• Formal, non-formal or informal

9. Learning Trajectories and Transitions
change
trigger
abstraction
synthesis
Trajectory
transition
transition
transition
transition
experience

10. Challenges to learning trajectories
Mobility of learners presents some challenges:
1. Competing conceptual demands;
2. Limited access to existing knowledge;
3. Poor recall of original experiences.

11. Technology-enhanced solutions
Challenge 1 – Competing conceptual demands
• Record experience for later reflection
• Audio / Video / Photo / Text
• Text editor

12. Technology-enhanced Solutions
Challenge 2 – Limited access to existing knowledge
• Record experience for later reflection
• Recommendation systems
• Sharing / collaboration with others
• Organizing / connection learning experiences

13. Technology-enhanced Solutions
Challenge 3 – Poor recall of original experiences
• Record experience for later reflection
• Notifications

14. Personal Learning Environments
• Technical level - a customized set of resources, services and tools,
generally consisting of web-based technologies, selected and used by
learners to create a flexible learning environment (Godwin-Jones,
2009)
• Social level - “an environment where people and tools and
communities and resources interact in a very loose kind of way”
(Wilson, 2008, p.18)

15. Technology-enhanced PLE

16. Application(s) Interface

17. Some current research projects
• MIRROR (http://www.mirror-project.eu/)
• Learning Layers (http://learning-layers.eu/)
• TRAILER (http://trailerproject.eu/)

18. Evernote

19. Future work
• Collect data on 1) how technology (in particular, PLEs) is being used to
support lifelong learning trajectories; 2) effects (positive and negative) of
learner mobility on lifelong learning trajectories;
• Identify any significant patterns in this data;
• Recommendations for future learning technologies based on the
data/patterns.

20. Acknowledgments
• Prof. Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sánchez / Prof. Declan O’ Sullivan
• EDUWORKS – European Commission FP7 funding

21. References
• European Commission. (2001). Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning
a Reality. Communication from the Commission. European Commission.
Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED476026.
• Godwin-Jones, R. (2009). Emerging technologies: Personal learning
environments. Language Learning & Technology, 13(2), 3–9.
• LIFE Center: Stevens, R. Bransford, J. & Stevens, A. (2005). Details on the LIFE
Center Lifelong and Lifewide Learning Diagram. Retrieved from http://life-
slc.org/about/citationdetails.html
• Sharples, M., Arnedillo-Sanchez, I., Milrad, M., & Vavoula, G. (2009). Chapter
14 Small devices , Big issues. In Technology-Enhanced Learning - Principles
and Products (pp. 233–251).
• Schugurensky, D., & Myers, J. (2003). A framework to explore lifelong
learning: the case of the civic education of civics teachers. International
Journal of Lifelong Education, 22(4), 325–352.
• Wilson, S. (2008). Patterns of personal learning environments. Interactive
Learning Environments, 16(1), 17–34.

22. Acknowledgments
Any questions or feedback?
Thank you.