=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-506/paper-8
|storemode=property
|title=The MUPPLE Competence Continuum
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-506/wild.pdf
|volume=Vol-506
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ectel/WildWKSH09
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==The MUPPLE Competence Continuum==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-506/wild.pdf
The MUPPLE Competence Continuum
Joanna Wild1, Fridolin Wild3, Marco Kalz2,
Marcus Specht2, Margit Hofer1
1
Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), Austria,
{hofer,wild}@zsi.at
2
Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands,
{marco.kalz,marcus.specht}@ou.nl
3
The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom,
f.wild@open.ac.uk
Abstract. The idea of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) seems to polar-
ise the educational sphere into supporters and opponents. Both groups relate
their enthusiasm or criticism to underlying competences motivated by or needed
for building up, running, and maintaining a PLE. Within the following article,
results of a qualitative study with multiple cases will be presented to shed light
onto which competence and which of its building blocks are involved in run-
ning a (mash-up) PLE. Data about the involved skills, abilities, habits, attitudes
and knowledge will be presented in a raster of the five dimensions 'plan', 're-
flect', 'monitor', 'act', and 'interact' against the three stages 'start', 'trigger', and
'outcome'. The findings indicate that there is a continuum ranging from the ones
needed right ahead to the ones ultimately sought.
Keywords: PLE, mash-ups, competence.
1 Introduction
In the beginning personal learning environments (PLE) were strongly
motivated by their opposition to learning management systems, while
today they form a movement on their own. PLEs provide a perspective
on learning environments that focuses on the individual (not the institu-
tion): they envision an empowered learner aiming for self-direction for
whom tightly- and loosely-coupled tools facilitate the process of defin-
ing outcomes, planning their achievement, conducting knowledge con-
struction, and regulating plus assessing (van Harmelen, 2008) – either
collaboratively or independently. Mash-ups relate to the ‘frankenstein-
ing’ of software artefacts and data. They serve end-users to glue to-
gether public web services in individual applications (Wild et al.,
2008). Their combination with PLEs merely stresses the fact that the
digital parts of a PLE are today typically web-based, distributed across
a variety of web servers, and networked.
80
While there is currently an intense discussion about the concept of
personal learning environments and its technological and organisational
foundations, it remains an open question whether a particular set of
skills or competencies is required for facilitators and learners to use
PLEs in their education or educational design activity. This question is
strongly related to the 'media literacy' and ‘digital literacy’ discussion
in educational technology. Thoman & Jolls (2005) define media liter-
acy as a “21st century approach to education. It provides a framework
to access, analyse, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms –
from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understand-
ing of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry
and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy".
In their declaration on lifelong learning from 2006 the European
Commission mentions eight key competences. One of these compe-
tences is defined as a “digital competence [that] involves the confident
and critical use of information society technology (IST) and thus basic
skills in information and communication technology (ICT)" (European
Parliament and the Council of Europe, 2006). Furthermore, a digitally
literate person is “equipped with the skills to benefit from and partici-
pate in the Information Society. This includes both the ability to use
new ICT tools and the media literacy skills to handle the flood of im-
ages, text and audiovisual content that constantly pour across the global
networks” (EC, 2007). Learners with a high level of digital literacy
deploy information and communication technology efficiently depend-
ing on situation and aim, use them to generate information and knowl-
edge in their profession, and transform knowledge and practice through
innovation and creativity with the help of these technologies (DTI,
2007).
DTI (2007) argues that in opposite to digital literacy that is usually
defined in terms of technologies, media literacy is defined in terms of
contents (e.g. images, text, audiovisual) of which the skills in question
are to allow mastery, see Figure 1. Also, instrumental, informational,
and strategic skills – i.e. the ability to operate hardware and software,
the ability to search for relevant information using hardware and soft-
ware, and the ability to use information for own purpose and position -
are all equally important for digital literacy whereas media literacy is
primarily concerned with strategic skills which include the ability to
evaluate and create messages (DTI, 2007).
A model of so called eSkills is proposed by Stucky et al. (2003).
Their IT Competence Maturity Model categorises eSkills according to
five degrees: (1) IT awareness (basic knowledge), (2) IT literacy
(knowledge to operate a PC), (3) expert user (special knowledge or
expertise with application software, helping other users), (4) profes-
sional entry level (professional knowledge) and (5) professional level
IT skills (advanced professional knowledge). Different than media and
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digital literacy, eSkills primarily focus on instrumental aspects and
provide a model for developing proficiency in applied settings (see
Figure 1 below).
Figure 1. State of the art: overview.
With the rise of social software in the last years and technologies for
a programmable web like Ajax, a silent revolution has taken place that
promotes a new era of end-user friendliness and usability that should
enable an average user to access, manage, re-mix, create, and commu-
nicate information and knowledge to various individuals and networks
more efficiently. At the same time public exposure and the ever-
growing collection of own digital traces became a source of valuable
information for constant improvement of the user’s own performance.
It is still, however, an open question, which skills are needed to apply
these technologies in an educational context. The here presented em-
pirical study aims to shed light on the competences (skills, abilities,
attitudes, habits, knowledge) required and motivated by the PLE and –
more specifically – Mash-Up PLE approaches. We believe that our
findings provide some valuable input on how literacies and skills are
developed with the help of these environments. Furthermore, the find-
ings allow to connect the MUPPLE and PLE debate to the ongoing
media- and digital literacy debates.
82
2 Methodology
A qualitative research approach, particularly case study research, was
applied as the key methodology in this study. Qualitative research
methods are designed to help researchers understand people and the
social and cultural contexts within which they live. Kaplan and Max-
well (2005) argue that the goal of understanding a phenomenon from
the point of view of the participants and its particular social and institu-
tional context is largely lost when textual data are quantified.
The data for this investigation was collected in a series of interviews
with representative people from the target groups facilitators, learning
designers, learners, and researchers. All interviews were open-ended
interviews, but they were roughly structured by a set of guiding ques-
tions. The interviews focused on identifying competences involved in
PLE use of both learners and facilitators. This article only presents the
findings about the learners. The length of the interviews varied between
40 minutes to one hour. Three sets helped to triangulate the subject
under study in order to make it less subjective and in order to incorpo-
rate multiple stakeholder views.
The first interview partners were a group of eight European instruc-
tors attending a training workshop on how to use social software tools
for learning delivered by the REVIVE project in March 2009 in Buda-
pest. Six of the interviewees represent higher education institutions;
two design e-learning courses for a chamber of commerce. All inter-
viewees have previous experience in using a virtual learning environ-
ment for teaching, whereas only four declared to have some experience
with social software tools such rss-feeds, blogs, google docs and social-
bookmarking tools.
The first interview was followed-up by a (virtual, i.e. skype) focus
group session comprising three experts on educational technology, fol-
lowed by an expert interview with an educational psychologist. The
picture has been rounded up by a (virtual, i.e. flashmeeting) interview
of a group of three media pedagogy students. All interviews were re-
corded and a transcript was prepared which was used as data basis for
the analysis.
Subsequently, analytical memos were elaborated sessions from the
gathered data by the investigators, the content thereby grounded in and
inductively distilled from the data. Coding was performed to group
identical and strongly related concepts. Memos and codes were finally
(re-)arranged in a large display to identify and elaborate the proposed
conceptual structure of five dimensions along three stages.
83
Fig.2. The PLE competence continuum.
3 Results
Within the conducted interviews, five dimensions with three stages
each could be identified. These dimensions encompass: plan, reflect,
84
monitor, act, and interact. The stages we could distinguish so far parti-
tion the underlying competences (skills, abilities, attitudes, habits,
knowledge) into those that serve as a minimal condition, necessary
triggers, and intended outcomes.
With 'minimal condition' we refer to those skills, abilities, attitudes,
habits, and knowledge that need to be present or are typically present
when beginning to consciously build a PLE, whereas 'necessary trig-
gers' denote those that are developed along the way towards the 'in-
tended outcomes' and on which the intended outcomes rely. They can
be surrogate or just incomplete in nature.
In brief, planning competence refers to those skills, abilities, habits,
attitudes, and knowledge that fix how goals, schedules, and paths are
set. Reflection is creative sense making of the past and enables plan-
ning. Monitoring refers to how progress control is performed. Last but
not least, the pair acting and interacting group social & collaboration
and information & tool competences.
4 Discussion
Within the planning sphere, the starting condition typically shows
3rd party domination accompanied by mere adoption and offer-oriented
selection of goals while at the same time maintaining a degree of in-
quisitiveness ("stubbornness", "fun in learning", "interest", "inquisi-
tiveness"). Among the necessary triggers we found the ability to expli-
cate intentions as well as objectives and the ability to set priorities to
tasks. These need to be developed in order to support the acquisition of
the ability to design ones own portfolio and the ability to match formal
and personal requirements where necessary.
With respect to reflection, willingness to change own attitudes was
identified as the minimal condition to start building a PLE, whereas, at
the opposite end of the competence continuum, we found the ability to
actively engage in the process of reviewing own (digital) traces, identi-
fying strengths and weaknesses of own performance and thus making
creative sense of the past learning experiences. In this case the trigger
allowing the passage from one stage to another is the process of "leav-
ing (digital) traces" - producing, publishing, and collecting learning
artefacts.
Looking at monitoring, the minimal condition typically includes such
'silver-spoon' learning habits as adopting external evaluation criteria
and relying in the evaluation of performance on the more knowledge-
able other (typically a teacher). Among the necessary triggers we found
the ability to build up criteria for self-evaluation and willingness to "put
yourself and your artefacts out [to the wider public] and get feedback
by others, or read others contributions for measuring and comparison".
85
These attitudes and abilities are necessary to trigger the acquisition of
the ability to control and direct learning progress in an autonomous and
disciplined way, and to actively design and direct the relationship with
the facilitator(s).
The next area, -- acting --, encompasses a set of skills, attitudes,
abilities, habits, and knowledge that closely relate to the concepts of
Media and Digital Literacies. As a minimal condition for constructing
an own PLE a learner needs basic skills in ICT i.e. the ability to operate
hard- and software, and the ability to search for, collect and store rele-
vant information. Another very important minimal condition in this
sphere is the willingness to try something new. Among the important
triggers we identified the following competences (abilities and atti-
tudes) from the interviews: comprehension that information beyond
printed media (such as wiki pages, blog entries, or peer comments)
have a high value for learning and knowledge construction; ability to
deconstruct your PLE i.e. "capability to think about what comprises
your personal learning environment"; ability to screen available tools
and as a result make an informed selection; and, last but not least, the
ability to re-purpose a tool, i.e. perceive affordances emerging from a
new context. The above-mentioned abilities and attitudes are an impor-
tant prerequisite for the acquisition of high levels of digital literacy.
These intended high-level outcomes encompass: the ability to assess
the quality and reliability of information and the ability to make pro-
ductive use of technology including matching the right tool for the right
job. Furthermore, the construction and maintenance of a tools portfolio
is now a competence fitted with a degree of creativity and framed by
constantly enriched experiences not only with the tools therein.
Whereas the minimal condition requires information gathering skills
that are by nature content-centred, the intended outcome is an ability to
regulate with respect to both content as well as the learning process.
Shedding light on interacting, basic social skills, a social interest,
and particularly foreign language skills define the minimal condition.
The triggers are mainly characterised by attitude changes: a willingness
for exposure needs to be developed -- a willingness such as "[releasing]
artefacts to others", "publishing not only reading", or -- more general --
"giving not only taking". Additionally, extended social skills are re-
quired to set off the acquisition of the targeted competences. These
extended social skills specifically relate to dealing with mediated com-
munication and mediated criticism, often underestimated in their im-
pact on performance. Intended outcomes were identified to be network-
ing competence including the ability to network for feedback, decision
competence on when to work in a group (and when not), and negotia-
tion skills. The latter relate to reaching agreement within a group with
respect to, e.g., roles, rules, and tools.
86
5 Conclusions
Within this contribution, we have proposed a draft framework for
studying the competence spectrum along five initial dimensions we
have elaborated from the given set of interviews. We have partitioned
the competence building blocks of skills, abilities, habits, and attitudes
into three stages guiding from the situation at the beginning to the in-
tended outcome.
This draft framework sheds light on the competences required for
and developed by Mash-UP PLEs (MUPPLEs). Although the frame-
work clearly shows that basic instrumental and informational digital
literacy skills are a prerequisite – ‘minimal condition’ – for starting to
consciously build a personal learning environment, MUPPLEs can ef-
fectively support the development of higher level (strategic) digital and
media literacy skills.
The reason for this may be found therein that monolithic applications
(such as virtual learning environments, also known as learning man-
agement systems) used in education are outdated and do not promote
the development of relevant digital literacy skills. It seems that the PLE
concept incorporates more recent IT approaches and a more challeng-
ing qua truly distributed setting that both require the learner to take a
more active role in managing and configuring the involved systems. In
short, PLEs can be said to be means to promote digital literacy.
The proposed draft framework and partitioning seems to be valid, but
while analysing, we already identified gaps and possibilities for con-
tinuing studies. The validity, however, needs to be further studied with
the involved stakeholders. We plan to enhance the study with the com-
plement: the competences needed for and developed by facilitators fol-
lowing the PLE approach. Additionally, we plan to verify both frame-
works with a quantitative study.
Future work will have to follow up on this to create a more detailed
picture of the competence continuum necessary for and motivated by
the concept of a personal learning environment.
Acknowledgement
This work has been co-funded by the European Union in the projects
Role, TENcompetence, and LTfLL under the Information and Commu-
nication Technologies (ICT) theme of the 7th Framework Programme
and in the transfer of innovation project Revive under the Leonardo da
Vinci sub-programme of the Lifelong Learning Programme.
87
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