Personal Blogs

Defining Personal Learning Network 

In defining 'personal learning network' or 'personal learning ecosystem' (similar to the concept of 'personal learning environment') I referred to several sources and my own experience as a teacher and researcher to arrive at my definition.  But to do so more deliberately than perhaps I have done before, I reflected how far I have come since my years as a Ph.D. candidate when I was still an initiate in the world of online research and learning communities when understanding what the term really meant and entailed was much easier said than done.  I wanted this new reflection to be partly based on my experience of learning on MOOCs, partly professional, (I am a teacher) partly more general (a source not referring to any specific community of practice or learning environment) and from the forum – learning from one of my colleagues on a course I am currently taking.  I looked at her definition, that she had formulated after referring to Downes (2007) and I found it work for me.  Downes is one of the pioneers of research on emerging technologies and learning innovation which have afforded learners access to educational literature and tasks at all times, which allow users to fit the course into their own pace, place and Personal Learning Environment (Attwell cited in Fournier et al. 2019).  But I believe, the ability to go beyond shaping an artificial environment to one’s own construct  is what brought the focus more networks because networks are what the learner became able to create and forge  - ‘a place or community where people feel comfortable, trusted, and valued, as part of critical learning on an open network’ which became theoretical basis for connectivist-type MOOCs (cMOOCs) and what is now referred to as new learning ecosystems’ (Fournier et al. 2019) and which ‘are are more reliable producers of learning and knowledge’ (Downes 2007, p.1). As Arzu Ekoç (2020) points out, teachers nowadays ‘don’t want to be restricted to their isolated classrooms and schools’ (their Personal Learning Environments PLEs) but to extend it into a world where they have the greatest capacity to learn.  Speaking more generally, Tour (2017, p.183) describes a PLN as ‘an informal group of likeminded people who share their knowledge and provide resources and advice to guide a learner in independent learning experiences in different digital spaces’ but notes how in most cases, participants in her research see PLNs as professional ventures.

Designing

With all this in mind, my own definition of a PLN is......

‘a personal-professional digital ecosystem best suited to the individuals’ socio-ethical approaches to learning and knowledge creation’.

Visualizing

My visualization of my own PLN is here (click)

References

Fournier, H., Molyneaux, H. and Kop, R., 2019, July. Human factors in new personal learning ecosystems: Challenges, ethical issues, and opportunities. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 230-238). Springer, Cham.

Arzu Ekoç (2020) No teacher is an island: technology-assisted personal learning network (PLN) among English language teachers in Turkey, Interactive Learning Environments, DOI: 10.1080/10494820.2020.1712428

Ekaterina Tour (2017) Teachers’ self-initiated professional learning through Personal Learning Networks, Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 26:2, 179-192, DOI: 10.1080/1475939X.2016.1196236

Downes, S (2017) 'Learning networks in Practice' [Online] Available at: https://www.academia.edu/2869500/Learning_networks_in_practice