Personal Learning Environments in Digital Education
Summary
Personal learning environments (PLEs) represent a learner-centred approach in which individuals curate, organise and interact with digital tools and resources to support their own educational goals. Moving beyond traditional, institutionally managed platforms, PLEs empower users to integrate social media, collaborative networks, adaptive applications and specialised repositories into a cohesive learning landscape. Central to this evolution is the promotion of self-regulated learning, whereby learners plan, monitor and evaluate their progress through personalised feedback loops. Advances in artificial intelligence and analytics now enable dynamic adaptation of content and pacing, fostering deeper engagement and improved outcomes. Globally, PLEs have been adopted across formal and informal settings—from school classrooms to professional development contexts—highlighting their versatility. Practical implementations include teacher-training modules that build critical digital competence, engineering curricula that embed sustainable learning practices and community platforms that strengthen peer support. Interdisciplinary research continues to explore the pedagogical foundations, technological affordances and equity considerations that underpin successful PLE deployment.
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Personal Learning Environments in Digital Education publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in personal learning environments in digital education across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Personal Learning Environment (PLE): A user-centred ecosystem of digital tools, platforms and resources selected and configured by the learner to support individual educational objectives.
Self-regulated Learning (SRL): The process by which learners set goals, monitor progress and adapt strategies using metacognitive, motivational and behavioural techniques.
Learning Management System (LMS): A software application used to deliver, track and manage formal educational courses, often forming part of a broader PLE architecture.
Metacognition: Awareness and control of one’s own thinking processes, enabling planning, monitoring and evaluation of learning activities.
References
- Beyond functionality: Building critical digital teaching competence among future primary education teachers. Contemporary Educational Technology (2023).
- Personal Learning Environments: Modeling Students’ Self-Regulation Enhancement Through a Learning Management System Platform. IEEE Access (2023).
- Using Personal Learning Environments before, during and after the Pandemic: The Case of “e-Me”. Education Sciences (2023).
- Applying ChatGPT to tackle the side effects of personal learning environments from learner and learning perspective: An interview of experts in higher education. PLOS ONE (2024).
- Online Tools for the Creation of Personal Learning Environments in Engineering Studies for Sustainable Learning. Sustainability (2021).
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