Description

The idea behind the Personal Learning Environment & Networking (PLE&N) came from identifying the learners' needs, based on their learning objectives and goals among plethora of different online information sources. The PLE&N enables the learners to customize their personal learning experiences by providing various learning tools in a cloud-based environment. Not only this cloud-based platform enables the learners to personalize their learning needs in the PLE&N structure, but also, can free them from the restriction of being in a classroom at a specific time and location. The deployment ofthe "flipped classroom" also provided a better time management for the learners.

In the first phase of the project, a series of interviews were conducted to identify learning and career needs of the learners in order to categorize them based on the common learning needs. In the second phase, we trialed the PLE&N platform for the selected subjects ("Methods and tools for Knowledge Management systems" and "Knowledge Communities"). Moreover, in order to attract a bigger community of learners to adopt PLE&N, the PLE&N platform (which was initially proposed for only 2 subjects ofISE543 and ISE5605) were introduced and expanded to 8 more of graduate and undergraduate subjects (ISE414, ISE458, ISE542, ISE5603, ISE3005, ISE457,ISE531, ISE5604). The interview questions proposed for this study were mostly open-ended questions in order to better explore the learner's background and their motives for learning. A survey has also been conducted at the end of each semester to collect the feedback from the students, both on PLE&N and Flipped classroom.

The interviews were conducted face to face or over the phone (13 face to face interviews and 1 over the phone). Each interview took almost around 40 minutes and the students were a mix of undergraduate, postgraduate or research students. Table 1 (in Appendix 1) shows the summary of the learning and career needs that were raised by students.

The flipped classroom survey were also collected from 163 students of a selected subject (ISE5603 & ISE5604) during one academic year. The data analysis showed that (please see Appendix 2 for details), more than 70% ofthe students agreed that, to various extents, flipped classroom make it easier for them to complete their subject assessment. More than 80%, to various extents, also found it useful to have flipped classroom in other subjects too. It also showed that more than 70% of the students, to various extents, believed that the flipped classroom enhances their understanding about the subject knowledge. Lastly, around 90% agreed, to various extents, that the flipped classroom make their study ofthe subject more efficient.

The survey for the PLE&N were also conducted on 10 subjects with the total number of students of 635 graduate and undergraduate students (245 students for academic year 2013-14 and 390 students for academic year 2014-15). As a benchmark, the results from some ofthe questions were chosen (Appendix 3). The results showed that more than 50% of the students send between 15 minutes to 1 hour every week on the PLE&N platform for their respective subject. Moreover, around 90% of the students, to various degrees, agreed that the PLE&N has helped them to understand the subject knowledge better. In total, we have introduced the PLE&N to 250 more than the number of students/subjects that we planned to do.

A series ofRSS feeds were also customized and put together by the subject's instructor to provide a reliable information streaming channel for the students. More than 50% of the students also mentioned that they have found the content provided through designated RSS feeds relevant to their course's curriculum. Around 70% them also agreed that the RSS feeds for the subject has, to various extents, contributed to the understanding of the subject.

In general, the students showed their feedback and support not only through the choices of the survey, but also, with their comments in the open ended questions of the surveyor inside the PLE&N platform itself. Some of the points highlighted were on how the peer to peer connection have saved them great amount of time in choosing the proper course's extracurricular materials and how collaboration and communication among the classmates have helped them not only be a passive participant in a subject, but how to contribute to the subject at the same time.