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A personal learning environment (PLE) describes the components that make up the educational platforms that a learner uses to achieve educational goals. While an LMS is considered course-centric, a PLE is, thus, learner-centric. An open network learning environment (ONLE) can help bridge the gap between a PLE and LMS. ONLEs encourage social networking collaboration. This article demonstrates that online courses that are built within various Web 2.0 resources drive students to create unique PLEs within ONLEs, and ultimately to become "global digital citizens."

This article examines the nature of learning communities constructed among a diverse group of adult learners in an online graduate-level 16 week instructional design course. Researchers analyzed course artifacts, survey responses, online profiles and project evaluations to explore communities formed in an online setting that involves 21 international participants. Data was collected through observing recorded audio webcasts and chat discussions, and analysis of student profiles, artifacts, survey responses, and course evaluations. The authors found evidence of community building without significant differences associated with race, culture, or gender. Instead, evidence for community building was more dependent on active participation, forming of shared identify, and the establishment of social network. The course design allowed individuals to work and communicate collaboratively. The authors admit that the study is narrow in scope with a small number of participants, making it unreliable for wider contexts.

Professional learning can be observed through online interactions. People are expanding their professional knowledge by voluntarily participating in online spaces.

SUMMARY: I especially appreciate this resource as it points you in several exciting directions to online CoPs to help you as a consumer of informatioin understand what constitutes a CoPs. I was pleased to see that I already belong to a few of these CoPs and I am excited to look into the others.

This was a great find. This site connects educators with communities that suit their needs. Educators can pick their interests and connect with folks on the spot. I really enjoyed viewing this resource!

First of all of course I love the name of this listing of CoP, "Online Communities of Practice in Practice". This listing is so interesting to me, I have for a long time collected from individuals blogs through feeds, but I haven't come across such a good listing of online communities. It was amazing to me as I begin to research these groups the number of educators in these networks. Of course each person is at their own level of involvement, but they are each harnessing the power of connecting in their own right, exactly how it works for them!

Views connectivism as a learning theory. Lists the 6 key skills that educators today should posses. These skills are: technical competence, experimentation of teaching methods, provide learners with autonomy, engage in creation, play and explore big ideas as well as capacity for complexity.

Author Sam Gist defines connectivism and explores some of the possible challenges that educators may face in adapting to this into their classrooms. He also highlights skills that may help educators embrace connectivist principles.

Faculty eCommons is a nice resource for educators incorporating social network learning within the classroom. This specific page adresses connectivsim; its meaning and use as well as connectivist pedagogies.

This article focuses on the future of the learning management system in online education. It argues that the closed LMS is incapable of offering the interactivity of web 2.0 technologies to students. It stresses the need for greater connectivity and environments that can be personalized.

I had never heard of start pages until reading this article. Are these used? I didn't recognize any of the products listed.

As the person in charge of the LMS at the School of Nursing, I find this article to be completely valid. We have some younger faculty that want to do more than our LMS will allow, even with some of the widgets that have been added. The main problem that we have is that our current faculty simply use our LMS as a place to provide information instead of encouraging students to use it more like a PLE.

This blog post discusses what a PLN is and how educators can create a PLN to support meaningful and relevant learning. It describes a PLN as an aspect of a PLE (personal learning environment) and then compares and contrasts the two. The author also provides examples of PLNs and discusses how to use MOOCs (massive online open course) and cMOOCs (connectivist massive open online course) to help build a PLN.

In this blog from Debbie Morrison it looks at creating a PLN. However, what make it interesting is her discussion of the difference between PLE's and PLN's which she states are often used interchangeably but shouldn't be.

This article has some interesting points about personal responsibility in creating a PLN.

SUMMARY: MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are designed to take advantage of social networks and track the learning of specific topics and specific users across tools, sites, apps, and more. MOOCs can be a part of your PLE, or your PLE can be an integral part of your MOOCs. Either way, Connectivism is at the heart of every MOOC.

Cate - After watching this video, I found MOOC to be very similar to what we are doing in this class. Engaging in the learning process and connecting/collaborating with one another. However, there are differences, such as - we do pay for this course! Overall, great social networking tool for learners. Thanks for sharing.

Cate, I liked this post. It was nice to get to listen instead of read, read, read. I found the information interesting. I had never heard of a MOOC or at least not identified as one. It fit perfectly with the connectivism. I found his comment about promoting life long network learning valuable. We are there, might as well take advantage of the opportunities.

This is a link to a paper about building online communities of practice with social networking tools. It details the CoP model introduced by Wenger, McDermott & Snyder: that is comprised of members and continually changes, that it is mutual engagement that binds members together, and that there is a shared set of resources that develops over time. The domain of CoP is is common ground that created a community. Practice comes from the resources that are created. The authors lead of of this into their proposed phases of the learning process in a CoP: Context, Discourse, Action, Reflection, and Reorganization.

This paper shows how members of communities of practice can increase their learning through social networking tools. They discuss how social networking is the forum for the domain (common ground) where people can discuss their ideas. This helps create personal meaning. This happens with a community which is a group of people who want to learn and interact together. The practice is the knowledge that the group develops. Within the article, he discusses how different social networks enhances communities of practice.

Babbel is the new way to learn a foreign language. The comprehensive learning system combines effective education methods with state-of-the-art technology. Interactive online courses will improve your grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation skills in no time. You'll make fast progress and have fun doing it.

This is a subscription website but they do have a free trial offer. This site offers learning videos on many subjects. They are engaging and entertaining. After the videos students can take an online quiz to test their learning.

I love this book! It was written as an experiment in online participatory, collaborative scholarship. It looks at how learning institutions can become as flexible and collaborative as social networking sites. Personal learning networks are highlighted in several examples. The leads on the project are Cathy Davidson (see earlier bookmark) and David Theo Goldberg.

This is a podcast of a lecture that George Siemens gave at the Ann Ferren conference. He talks about connectivism, learner self-organization in online courses and social networks he has been involved with as well as his efforts to connect open free personal learning networks of our social lives with a more rigorous university setting.

This article is written on the challenges people face by using the connectivist learning theory. It states that it will work for some students, but like all theories, not all students will benefit with this theory. Knowing your students and being flexible is key in having a successful class.

This case study examines which factors play into a successful MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Some of these factors include peer interaction, professor engagement, and accessible course resources. The researchers concluded that these factors are as important in MOOCs as they are in traditional classroom settings. The article implies that classes based on the philosophy of connectivism are effective, but a number of factors must be taken into account when planning instruction.

It is difficult to maintain continuous student engagement in a traditional class setting. It is doubly so when the setting is online. This study researched what characteristics promote student engagement in online classes. Course takers identified 5 characteristics of MOOCs that encouraged their continued participation in the course. For the most part, courses that focus on problems and clear solutions, contain high levels of peer interaction and teacher participation, and include many active learning activities with accompanying course resources are well-liked by MOOC participants. The authors are certainly right to suggest that future research examine courses that are not as highly participatory as the MOOCs that are focused on in this study. I wondered as I read the article if the same level of engagement can be seen in other courses.

As this study emphasized, online courses have a unique challenge when compared to traditional brick-and-mortar courses because learners are physically separated from an instructor by a computer screen. Instructors do not just have to overcome motivation barriers, but also administrative obstacles. The article's "Table 2: Summary of Strategies Used" presented some well-designed methods to increase instructor accessibility---from the "Code Clinic" to weekly live interactive discussions.

Great resource for national and state-by-state data on K-12 online learning. I subscribe to their blog as well.