”LEARNING IS MY JOURNEY” – SCAFFOLDING DIGITAL PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN A VOCATIONAL TEACHER EDUCATION CONTEXT

Formal, informal and nonformal learning are counted as a base of competence. Different kinds of learning environments are needed and it has to be considered how competences will be transparent in digital environments. It is not possible to count only on learning management systems (LMS) of educational institutes, but more encourage students to use digital environments that they need, feel usable and are their own. Very often this kinds of environments requires open web tools.

A teacher needs also her digital personal environment to scaffold, share learning materials and give assignments to her students. A teacher may use learning management systems or open web tools for this purpose. Open environments are usually flexible and combining several kinds of tools and are therefore more and more popular in education.

In Häme University of Applied Sciences, The School of Professional Teacher Education it has been piloted with 20 vocational teacher students learning by personal learning environments (PLE). The pilot group is studying 10 months and is under the research process. The data has been collected in the beginning and during the learning process. In the end there will be the final survey (June 2016). The main interest is to focus on teacher’s scaffolding process of the personal learning environment in digital age.

The research question is: What kind of scaffolding model will produce personal learning environments and ePortfolios so that student’s competences are there transparent?

In this pilot learning process the teacher scaffold by her open learning environment (Wordpress), closed Facebook group, Webex and WhatsApp. Teacher is writing a teacher’s blog as scaffolding and also reflecting her and the students’ acts and learning. In the beginning of the teacher studies the teacher students studied individually by the MOOC different kinds of web tools and after that chose their digital personal learning environments and web tools for their own learning. Teacher got the links to students’ environments. Students seem to prefer open web tools like Blogger and Wordpress as their personal learning environment.

In the first stage the students create a workspaces and in the second stage that is in the end of studies, they will be guided to form showcases from their workspace materials. The whole idea is to support a lifelong learning by use of personal learning environments that are following a person in her every stage of life – further education and working life. The student’s learning outcomes will not stay in educational organization’s learning management systems, but are owned by students themselves.

A teacher has a big role in scaffolding students to use their personal learning environments. A teacher needs to consider, what kinds of assignments are providing learning outcomes that shows students’ competences based on authentic work situations. Peer learning, collaborative work, authentic learning and peer assessment as well as teacher’s assessment are tools for building up a professional learning environment and ePortfolio. Scaffolding needs to be personal and supportive for each student. A teacher needs to jump in authentic learning and teaching situations and rely on her professionality of her teacherhood.