Roadmap to PLE - A Research Route to Empower the Use of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)

In this position paper we argue that in order to design, deploy and evaluate institutional Personal Learning Environments, a system-level Roadmap should be developed accounting for the progressive expansion towards the following evolutions directions: from closed (VLE) to Open Learning Environments (OLE); from the individual-group, to individual-network and individual-collective relations; from using structured learning resources to using any type of content; from being instructor/institution-led by being self-regulated and self-managed; from being aimed at learning in the university system to supporting work-based learning; from being centered around web 2.0 to being empowered by web 3.0 tools and technologies. In order to accompany the development of such a Roadmap, an operational definition and hexagonal model of the PLE is presented in this paper together with its three-steps evolutionary process.