The team:

Phil Beauvoir
Mark Johnson
Oleg Liber
Colin Milligan
Paul Sharples
Scott Wilson

Things we've created:

Project plan
Scenarios
Pattern Language
Service Specifications
PLEX
PLEWeb

Standards we've implemented:

Atom Syndication Format
Atom Publishing Protocol FOAF
IMS Enterprise
RSS
OPML
43 Things API
del.icio.us API
Simpy API
XCRI

Elsewhere:

del.icio.us bookmarks

This is the PLE project at Bolton University, working towards defining the tools for personal learning. The project is being funded by JISC and carried out by CETIS

The project is part of the e-Learning Reference Models programme for the e-Framework. Read a very short project summary .

the personal learning environments blog

PLE Project Summary

The last five years have seen a major uptake of VLEs by colleges and universities. The vast majority of these are large, institutional systems, which are predominantly course based providing support for content distribution, discussion and assessment, mainly through proprietary tools. There are several problems with this approach of which two are of most concern.

VLEs are not easily customised to suit the needs and preferences of individuals
As learners move between institutions, they may need to learn the interfaces to different VLEs.

An alternative approach would be to locate a large amount of VLE functionality with the learner either as a desktop application or an independently hosted portal. Institutions would still provide content via repositories, undertake assessment and so on, but learners would interact with these using their personal systems (Personal Learning Environment), comprising their preferred tools and ways of working.

The PLE project team at CETIS is currently working on developing the definition, scope and a reference model for PLEs. It will also be developing desktop and portal based prototypes. The project hopes to report early in 2006.

Oleg Liber, 4 October, 2005