Presentation given at IEEE International Conference on Learning Technologies (ICALT) 2011, Athens GA, USA

1. Bridging the gap between
PLE and LMS
Francesco Di Cerbo, Gabriella Dodero,
Cerbo
Teresa Liew Bao Yng°
Center for Applied Software Engineering
Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy
{name.surname}@unibz.it
°teresalby@gmail.com
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2. Overview
 The paper illustrates how to combine
the LMS and PLE worlds, making use
of Web 2.0 and 3D Web technologies.
 This synthesis is created using DIEL, a
collaborative environment
 powered by Web 2.0;
 based on widely used technology, Moodle.
July 6, 2011 Bridging the gap between PLE and LMS 2

3. “Industrial Age” Education
 “Traditional” teaching processes are
generally content-based.
 Same contents for everyone, and at
the same pace.
 Many research efforts innovate “industrial
age” approaches, to become (more)
learner-centered.
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4. LMS
 Learning Management Systems have
been around since many years.
 While their contribution is being
questioned by a number of
researchers, their historical value in
easing the interactions between
educational institutions and students
stands.
 Why are they criticized?
July 6, 2011 Bridging the gap between PLE and LMS 4

5. LMS
 LMS are generally more focused on
supporting structured (compartmented)
teaching activities, rather than
emphasizing on individual needs.
 To date many institutional e-learning
sites and systems lack of user-centered
approach, social interaction and
collaboration.
 Despite a 5% increment of students that
attended at least one online course from 2007
to 2010, their LMS user satisfaction drops
from 77% to 51%. (ECAR 2010).
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6. The Walled Garden Effect
 It is the creation of a specific (and isolated)
environment, where materials and
interactions take place on a specific topic or
subject.
 Authors and bloggers on education often
underline the walled garden as one of the
major issues connected with institutional
LMS.
 An isolated system is valuable for keeping
authoritative information and focusing its
community, but it does not foster social
collaboration in the large scale.
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7. Nice Walled Gardens...
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8. Nice Walled Gardens...
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9. Walled Garden as Drawback
 Knowledge splitting inside LMS does not
help students in making logical
connections between different topics.
 It does not help to establish inter-
community interactions, as well!
 Many researchers point out the role of
social media (Facebook, Twitter and so
on) in supporting students' interactions
for educational purposes, such as finding
resources and explanations (B. Smith
2009).
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10. Instead, with PLE...
From Weller, M.: The ed techie: My personal work/leisure/learning environment. Online.
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11. PLE
 Personal Learning Environments (PLE)
are websites or services where
learners are able to produce learning
content and considerations through:
 storing documentation
 aggregating data from external
communities (RSS and blogs)
 PLEs are the combination of social
software applications and web services
in a platform or portal, for the purpose
of learning.
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12. An User-Centered Environment
 A PLE :
 is user-centric per design
 is devoted to mash-ups
 can be used as a portfolio of
knowledge and resources
 is valuable as Life-Long Learning
support tool, independent from any
institution or experience.
 On the other hand, it is not well-suited as
support for structured interactions, like
for instance assignment management.
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13. Our idea
 Considering the advantages of both
systems, we tried to combine them in
a single product.
 We designed a specific support for PLE
interactions, that is embedded in a
LMS 3D system, DIEL.
 3D is the integration key we adopted,
to exploit spatial organization of
contents and support for social PLE
interactions.
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14. What is DIEL?
 It stays for “Dynamic Interactive E-
Learning” software.
 Key points:
 Highest flexibility for instructor's use.
 Possibility to implement “Learning by
Doing” approaches in a virtual
collaborative environment.
➔
Comprehension and co-construction of
educational contents.
 Social translucence to allow immediate
and intuitive virtual interactions.
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15. DIEL PLE Vision
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16. PLE in DIEL
 A number of
components take
part in DIEL's PLE
implementation.
 Communication
and Bookmarking
tools are
implemented and
currently
available.
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17. Communications
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18. Bookmarks
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19. Usability Test
 The usability tests
involved 12
university and 12
high school
students.
 The collected
results are
encouraging,
especially with
respect to user
satisfaction.
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20. Upcoming: Going social...
 It is planned to
extend 3D PLE
support, showing
also shared PLE
resources of
other users.
➔ Valuable
information on
user collaboration
levels in a
community.
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21. Conclusions
 PLE support can be considered one
promising perspective introducing learning-
centered features into well-structured LMS,
combining benefits of both platforms.
 DIEL provides an initial support for PLE,
allowing users to keep their resources and
social interactions in a private and self-
organized space.
 As future work, we shall extend PLE, adding
specific social interaction features.
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22. References
 Smith, B., “Use of Online Educational
Social Networking in a School
Environment”
http://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/ir/handle/1
840.16/900
 ECAR report 2010, S. D. Smith and J. B.
Caruso, “ECAR study of undergraduate
students and information technology,
2010,” Tech. Rep., Oct. 2010.
http://www.educause.edu/
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23. Thank you!
Questions?
francesco.dicerbo@unibz.it
DIEL is available at:
diel.case.unibz.it
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24. Social Translucence
 Design of social
infrastructures,
making collective
activities visible
 The community
adapts interactions
based on knowledge
of respective
positions and
activities
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25. Social Translucence
 Design of social
infrastructures,
making collective
activities visible
 The community
adapts interactions
based on knowledge
of respective
positions and
activities
July 6, 2011 Bridging the gap between PLE and LMS 25