Customized PLE implementations for test-bed scenario validations

Abstract

In order to provide customized personal learning environment (PLE) implementations for real-world test-beds, this deliverable aims at elaborating a methodology to validate educational settings according to the ROLE vision. Basically, the overall approach consists of two parts. In the first part the most relevant results from the first 18 months of the ROLE project are summarised in order to outline the key concepts and to formulate questions for analysing and improving real-world scenarios with respect to ROLE vision. Thereby, project outcomes are presented along four dimensions related to PLEs, namely the psycho-pedagogical, the community, the technical, and the development perspective. In the second part of the deliverable, the ROLE test-beds and their results from former project milestones are analysed through this PLE scenario validation method. The study gives an overview of starting points, ROLE-related improvements and future plans for each test-bed. Additionally, experiences and limitations of realising the ROLE vision in the test-beds are manifested. Overall, the findings of the test-bed validation study can be summarised as follows: • In university settings, like OU, SJTU and RWTH, learning is driven by the organisation, primarily through the efforts of teaching staff and by applying LMS technology. Yet, higher and further education settings are open to new pedagogical, community-oriented, or technical concepts. At the university test-beds, various ROLE ideas have been realised before or within the project. • Corporate settings, like FESTO and BILD, are highly focussing on competences related to their businesses, thus being praxis-oriented but also very instutionalised. However, it requires more efforts to open up or personalise learning environments. Various aspects of the ROLE vision are restricted by organisational policies or boundaries. On the other side, these test-beds also offer great opportunities for exploiting ROLE concepts commercially. With respect to work package 4 (‘ROLE services’), this document proposes a methodology to validate real-world learning scenarios under consideration of psycho-pedagogical and community issues and according to the technical infrastructure, the personal learning services, and novel software development methods. Additionally, it is shown how this validation can be conducted in praxis and with the aim to analyse and improve real-world test-beds. This deliverable relates to the five ROLE objectives (cf. ROLE-DoW, p.6), as it summarises technical approaches (RO1: support of individual assembly of learning environments), psycho-pedagogical aspects (RO2: psycho-pedagogically sound framework), community-oriented PLE development (RO3: new engineering methods considering the different stakeholder communities), and evaluation methodologies (RO4: evaluation of the effectiveness of PLEs in the test-beds) within the ROLE project. Moreover, this document indicates possible exploitation strategies (RO5), e.g. within the BILD test-bed. The deliverable is related to task 4.4 (‘Test-bed Technical Platforms’) and a joint outcome of the work packages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9. It also includes contributions of an external partner (Etestme).