1 Transforming K12 Learning and Assessment with Personal Learning Environments

Transforming K12 Learning and Assessment with Personal Learning Environments Art Titzel Harrisburg University LTMS 520

2 TRANSFORMING K12 LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT Learning and assessment in a technology rich K12 classroom can be transformed through the development of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) for all students. If done correctly, a movement away from the traditional Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to a more collaborative and open PLE, where students create their own learning environment, would encourage a greater degree of higher level thinking and metacognition on the part of students (Educause, 2009; Gu & Li, 2009). In addition, students could become the curator of their own learning by developing and maintaining a learning portfolio that demonstrates their degree of higher level thinking, creation, and metacognition. This personal learning portfolio would be owned by the student who would allow access to teachers and school officials to use for assessment purposes. The move from an LMS to a PLE would fundamentally alter the relationship of teaching and learning in a traditional K12 school system by teaching students course content through a differentiated PLE paradigm where students can use and build upon their digital and online resources for learning course content. Teachers become learning guides, while schools become learning resources. What is a PLE? A PLE is individualized and flexible learning systems created by learners to access and manage information. According to the 2011 Horizon Report, which reports on trends in Education, a PLE is not simply a technology but an approach or process that is individualized by design, and thus different from person to person (Johnson, Adams & Haywood, 2011). A typical PLE would consist of a variety of tools that a learner would use to access and manage information. Specific tools could include: an rss aggregator, like Google Reader; social network platforms, like Twitter or Ning; an online diary/commentary site, like Blogger or Wordpress; a social bookmarking site, like Diigo or Delicious; a photo/video sharing site, like Flickr or

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YouTube; and a variety of other tools that the learner would use to connect with information and people and to manage their learning. To understand what a PLE is one has to understand what it isnt. A PLE is different from the more traditional LMS that most technology rich schools use to manage student learning. The fundamental difference is that an LMS is course specific, while a PLE is learner specific. An LMS does not transform learning in a meaningful 21st century way because it maintains the teacher centric approach of the factory school model of learning and has become the symbol of the status quo approach to elearning (Mott, 2010). A PLE is a truly individualized learning system that is student centric. A teachers role in a PLE is essential as a guide and coach, rather than the traditional sage on the stage. In a PLE classroom teachers rarely deliver the content, rather they help students analyze and evaluate content in order to make meaning. How a PLE Can Transform Learning and Assessment There are various ways that a PLE can transform learning and assessment in a traditional K12 educational environment. One of the most important ways is that a PLE by its very nature requires a high degree of higher order thinking. A necessary requirement for students to effectively interact with their PLE is the ability to analyze and evaluate sources of information for reliability and validity. Without a firm grasp of these skills a student would be at risk of misinterpreting a vast amount of data and information. Through their PLE students will have the opportunity to reflect on their learning, create digital media artifacts, and collaborate with people around the world in authentic problem solving projects. All of these examples require students to tap into higher order levels of thinking that make learning richer and deeper than in a LMS learning model.

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Another facet of learning that would be enhanced by a PLE is metacognition. The act of thinking about thinking and understanding how one learns is an essential component of a PLE. It is also an essential component of becoming a self regulated learner, which is a goal that all K12 educational establishments should have for their students in the 21st Century (P21, 2009). To be a self regulated learner requires one to understand how they learn and to construct a learning environment that helps them learn. A LMS is designed to be course specific, so it fails to be responsive to the individualized and specific learning needs of students who are used to designing their own learning environments through Facebook, YouTube, texting, and various other ways students engage with their world outside of school. A requirement of schools that embrace the PLE would be to teach students how to be self-reflective and to provide students from a young age opportunities to reflect on their own learning. Many schools and teachers already do this, but student reflection will need to be a central focus of schools embracing a PLE system to teach students that thinking about how they learn is as important as thinking about content. With a metacognitive teaching strategy in place students will more easily be able to construct their PLEs to truly reflect their personal learning styles. Since metacognition and higher order thinking skills are needed for a PLE to be effective it is necessary for students to be instructed and assessed based on their reflection and levels of thinking contained in their writing and other learning artifacts. The problem is for teachers to clearly define specific performance criteria into narrower behaviors and characteristics based on metacognition and higher order thinking skills that students will need to demonstrate (Airasian, 152). If this is done effectively students will have more independence to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge of content. The content knowledge will be assessed secondarily to the ability of students to reflect, analyze, and create. A flipping of assessment

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focus will need to take place for teachers who nurture a PLE for students. Instead of primarily teaching content because of State Standards, teachers will need to use their content Standards to teach and assess metacognition and higher order thinking skills. The flipping of teaching and assessment focus is one example of how a PLE can be used to transform a school system. A less radical aspect of assessing a PLE is through the use of student learning portfolios, or eportfolios. A student owned eportfolio is a natural component of a PLE, since it would be a place where students would display their best work. There are numerous advantages of student portfolios. Some advantages include: making students an active part of the assessment process; demonstrates progress over time; emphasizes more authentic products over selected response assessments; provides encouragement for students to selfreflect on their learning; and can be used for employment or collegiate admissions (Airasian, 174). There are a large variety of free and paid sites that could be used to store eportfolios. Many now come with social networking and LMS capabilities. However, for cash strapped K12 school systems there are abundant and diverse eportfolio options, such as: wikis, Google Sites, or open source sites like Elgg or Mahara. Whatever the student learning portfolio looks like it is an important part of student assessment in a PLE since it is owned by the student and demonstrates the best products the student has created. Evaluating the Effectiveness of PLEs While student assessment in a PLE may look somewhat similar to traditional student assessment, an evaluation of the effectiveness of PLEs within a school system provides distinct challenges that only through the use of online tracking software can provide meaningful data. One way to evaluate the online interactions among students is to use the network science approach that incorporates online tracking software to analyze student network contributions (Phillip, 19). One piece of software that was developed by Jed Burtis, called Analytic Toolkit,

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enables teachers to determine which students take the lead in online discussions over time, patterns of online interactions for entire networks of students, and the quality of collaboration on online projects (Phillip, 20). Universal patterns of online communication and collaboration can be determined through the effective use of the Network Science approach to evaluation of online networks, however, school officials can micro-manage the data, which could have an adverse effect on student sharing. The purposes of the Network Science approach need to be transparent and used for program evaluation purposes only to avoid the impression of control that could minimize the motivation for academic online communication and collaboration. Another approach to evaluating the effectiveness of a schools PLE program is through the analysis of self and peer feedback. As University of Strathclyde education professor David Nichol stated, We tend to think of feedback as something a teacher provides, but if students are to become independent lifelong learners, they have to become better at judging their own work...If you really want to improve learning, get students to give one another feedback. Giving feedback is cognitively more demanding than receiving feedback. That way, you can accelerate learning (Effective Assessment,13). By analyzing the quantity and quality of student provided feedback one can make some preliminary judgements on the effectiveness of the PLE programs teaching of metacognitive and higher order thinking skills. Although PLEs have the potential to transform traditional public school systems the fact remains that if students are highly engaged in relevant learning activities and if those activities are tied to content standards, then standardized test scores should improve. Therefore, one of the standard approaches for evaluating educational programs--the standardized test--can still be used to determine the learning of students in a school system. Used together the Network Science approach to evaluation, the review of student provided feedback, and traditional

7 TRANSFORMING K12 LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT standardized tests can be an effective way to evaluate the effectiveness of a school systems use of PLEs for engaging students in their own learning. Finally, technology has caught up with the best educational practices of individualized learning and assessment. A decade ago online tools that would enable a true PLE were in its infancy, but today the tools are available. It is now up to school leaders to recognize the fact and to begin a difficult, but educationally sound, transition of releasing control of learning from the school system to the individual learner. To effectively make this transformation schools need to do more than just provide the tools for making PLEs a reality. Without a school systems embrace of teaching and assessing metacognition and higher order thinking skills then the tools will be ineffective in truly transforming a school system to individualized learning. Students need to be taught the skills of effective life long learning so they can become selfregulated learners who can effectively create their own learning environment. School systems that fail to provide students with the tools and skills for them to own their PLE run the risk of falling into the dustbin of educational history.

8 TRANSFORMING K12 LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT References Airasian, Peter W. (2000). Assessment in the Classroom: A Concise Approach (2nd ed.). Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2000. Educause. (May 2009). 7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments. Retrieved July 17, 2011 from http://go.nmc.org/uqxzn Effective Assessment in a Digital Age. (2010). Bristol, England: Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2010. Retrieved July 16, 2011 from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/elearning/digiassass_eada.pdf Gu, Xiao-Qing and Li, Xue. (2009). A Conceptual Model of Personal Learning Environment Based On Shanghai Lifelong Learning System. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in Education. Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education, 2009. Retrieved July 17, 2011 from www.apsce.net/ICCE2009/pdf/C6/proceedings885-889.pdf Johnson, L, Adams, S, and Haywood, K. Personal Learning Environments. The NMC Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium, 2011. 30-33. Print. Leslie, Scott. PLE Diagrams wiki. Retrieved July 16, 2011 from http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/PLE+Diagrams Mott, Jonathan. (2010). Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network. Educause Quarterly, 33. Retrieved July 16, 2011 from http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/ EnvisioningthePostLMSEraTheOpe/199389 P21 Framework Definitions. (2009). Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009. Retrieved July 17, 2011 from http://www.p21.org/documents/P21_Framework_Definitions.pdf

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Phillip, D.N. (2006). Online Learning and the Evaluation of Group Processes. Rivista italiana di tecnologia cultura e formazione. Retrieved July 16, 2011 from http://www.ckbg.org/?dl_id=72