ICALT 2015 paper presentation

1. Exploring Different
Routes
from LMS towards PLE:
a Dialectical Perspective
Vladimir Tomberg
Mart Laanpere
Hans Põldoja
1ICALT 2015, Hualien, Taiwan

2. LMS vs. PLE, or LMS & PLE?
 Topic:
A modern TEL system as a synthesis of LMS and PLE
 Research Question:
How can we generalize various attempts to provide an
alternative to LMS as the mainstream software platform in
TEL?
ICALT 2015, Hualien, Taiwan 2

3. PLE as Antithesis to LMS
 Mainstream technological regime in TEL has been clearly
associated with the dominance of LMS
 Innovators’ attempts to replace LMS with an alternative
can be explained from the perspective of the dialectical
logic, interpreting open Personal Learning Environments
as a radical antithesis to the mainstream socio-technical
regime (LMS)
3ICALT 2015, Hualien, Taiwan

4. Our Classification of PLE
1. Desktop-based PLE
The first steps in an evolution of PLE. Aimed a connection of the
personal desktop software to several LMSs simultaneously.
 Manchester Framework Project and desktop version of PLEX
4ICALT 2015, Hualien, Taiwan

5. Our Classification of PLE (2)
2. Social media as PLE
Connecting social software tools into a hub by means of RSS
threads help a learner to organize their learning flow
 Wiki-based PLE (Google sites)
 social-network-based PLE (Facebook)
 social-aggregator-based PLE (e.g. Netvibes)
 browser-based PLE (e.g. Flock)
3. Widget-based PLE
5ICALT 2015, Hualien, Taiwan

6. Our Classification of PLE (3)
3. Widget-based PLE
Service providers offer small applications that can be embedded into
a container application. A learner builds the own PLE by combining
these widgets in the appropriate manner.
Widgets are packaged according to the W3C Widgets specification
and can be hosted in a container application such as Drupal,
WordPress, Moodle, Elgg, etc.
 TENCompetence, Palette and ROLE
6ICALT 2015, Hualien, Taiwan

7. Pedagogical perspective: PLE as an
approach
 Fiedler and Väljataga [2011] argued that PLE should not
be understood at all as a certain type of software
application, rather is should be seen as a pedagogical
approach to organizing learning
 Learners and groups should be able to:
◦ Set their personal learning goals,
◦ Design an appropriate learning environment
◦ Take control over the learning activities
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8. Design experiments
 Three design experiments exploring alternative
approaches to PLE as a replacement for institutional LMS:
1. LePress
2. EduFeedr
3. Dippler
 We have started in 2006 with LePress and finished in 2013
with Dippler
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9. LePress
 Trying to find how to transfer into a blog-based PLE formal
learning workflows that are used in traditional LMS
 Typical assessment workflow was implemented into
WordPress using LePress plug-in
 LePress allows the teachers to keep the control over the
assessment without a need to leave social media based
PLE
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10. LePress: connecting publishing
workflow with learning semantics
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11. Teachers’ Gradebook
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12. LePress widgets of Student and Teacher
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13.  Easy deployment of one-
time courses "in the field"
 Possibility to support
teacher control over
assessment workflow
 Implementation of
lightweight course
coordination space
 Easy to use and easy to
learn (confirmed by study)
 Does not support any
connections between the
students, which is highly
demanded
 Requirement to install
plug-in in a blog
 Impossibility of use with
platforms like
Wordpress.com,
Edublogs.org. etc.
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Advantages vs. disadvantages

14. EduFeedr
 Coordination and awareness tool for open online courses
with blogs
 Course enrollment, aggregating blog posts and comments,
managing assignments, visualizing the progress and
social network
 Plugin-free architecture enables learners to use free
blogging services (WordPress.com, Blogger)
 Example use cases: higher education courses with
informal participants, small open online courses
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15. EduFeedr UI and Analytics
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16.  No plug-ins needed;
 The learners can self-enroll
to the course, thus limiting
the workload of the
facilitator;
 Enhancing the discussions
by displaying most recent
comments from learners’
blogs;
 Simple learning analytics
visualizations (progress
chart, social network);
 Focus on openness: almost
all information (except
learners’ e-mail addresses)
is public for any visitor
 There is no simple way
for private grading of
learners’ blog posts;
 Learners’ blog post is
connected with the
assignment only if the
learner included a link to
the assignment in her
post;
 There is no way to keep
private blogs that are
visible only for the
participants of the course
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Advantages vs. disadvantages

17. Dippler as DLE
 Core services (digital specimen): BackOffice (BOS wsdl), Wordpress as PLE,
Learning Object Repository, online testing service Questr, institutional client,
mobile clients
 Secondary services: social media (SlideShare, YouTube), identity management (to
come: concept mapping, 6 thinking hats)
 User communities: learners, facilitators, administrative staff, software developers
 Adaptive: institutions and users can expand and adapt the ecosystem
 Self-regulation: users can change affiliation, design learning paths
 Learning analytics: annotating with domain-specific categories

18. Software implementation
Social media
Blog Profile
Courses
Activities
RSS
Users
Analytics
Courses
Widgets
Institutional
BOS Middleware:
BackOffice Service
Cloud
Storage
HTTP
WS
Types of tasks:
Post
Structured post
Artefact (file)
Discussion
Self-test
Test
Group task
Offline task
All courses
Featured
My courses
Course page
Summary
Course info
Outcomes
Announcem.
Participants
Groups
Resources
Tasks
Settings
Categories
Learner's Wordpress
with Dippler plugin
Dippler: institutional
client, teacher's tool
IOS
app:
mobile
client

19.  Better integration with other
information systems used in the
university
 Potential for advanced learning
analytics
 Availability of many features
common to LMS that reduce the
workload of teachers
 Middleware component (BOS
service) is under control of
academia
 Setting up a PLE is more
complex procedure;
 Further development and
administration of BOS
service requires efforts
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Advantages vs. disadvantages

20. Conclusion
 The new software development projects in the TEL domain are initiated
due to low satisfaction with existing socio-technical paradigm. This paper
demonstrated how such initiatives can be analysed from the dialectical
perspective
 Dialectical analysis helps us to understand oppositional nature of driving
forces (emotions, preferences, perceived needs, concepts) behind the
software project
 Dialectical analysis lead the developers towards overcoming a binary
opposition and seek the dialectical synthesis that makes use of the best
from both sides: an existing, mature socio-technical regime and its
innovative challenger ICALT 2015, Hualien, Taiwan 20