Introducing personal learning environments to informal learners: lessons learned from the openlearn case study

Abstract

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) hold the potential to address the needs of informal learners for multi-sourced content and easily customisable learning environments. This paper presents the lessons learned from a case study regarding the use of widget-based PLEs by informal learners for finding and evaluating Open Educational Resources (OER). The lessons learned from this case study have allowed the authors to detect some of the obstacles for the successful adoption of PLEs by informal learners, as well as to identify ways for overcoming these obstacles.