Abstract:

Postgraduate studies focused on the acquisition of specialized training are aimed to students characterized for being less numerous than at other learning levels. This fact, join to the relevance of the assessment of the personal and autonomous work of the student, presents the necessity of developing new tools that are part of personal learning environment (PLE) of these students.

PLE is composed by all the elements that contribute to develop training and knowledge acquisition of a person. Initially, personal environments had an analogical concept, where physical material or face meetings which provide a verbal dissemination and exchange of ideas and knowledge could be found. However, a few years ago, personal environments were digitized, with introduction of new technologies, until now when the use of TIC’s seems to play an essential role in the formation. In this sense, the tools and applications that have emerged are offering a wide range of possibilities to be used in a postgraduate teaching context.

PLE organization includes the use of different tools. For example, subject organization, content distribution, bulletin boards, surveys, etc by using personal blogs, educational wikis, reading tools, in which students can also intervene by providing relevant information to the subject development. Also, a PLE includes resources such as search engines of scientific material (Google Scholar, Scirus, etc.), localization and dissemination of audiovisual material (Youtube, Picassa, Vimeo, Flickr, etc.), for organizing task and enhancing study techniques such as virtual calendars, task and study times organizers (Google Calendar, Wunderlist, GTD, Dropbox, etc.). The educational use of virtual environments offers the possibility of establishing a recreation-based learning using 3D environments, simulators or models, which could be of great interest for the training of specific skills. Finally, the use of highly topical personal tools, such as social networks, for example Facebook or Twitter, is also proposed for educational purposes, taking advantage of the great use to exchange information.

The possibility of using these tools in small groups of students, such as postgraduate students, promotes greater control and monitoring of the activity by the professor. It seeks to promote the student learning as responsible readers and writers, with critical abilities to select topics, searching for efficient information and being responsible for the used material (copyright).

An appropriate and well targeted use of such tools would be very useful for maximizing autonomous work of the student, while recalling that the intervention of the professor is crucial coordinating all subsequent activities that promote awareness and correction of problems arising in this process, in order to develop a formative assessment in postgraduate students. Ultimately, PLE is proposed as a constructivist teaching model where the student learns producing information.

Keywords:

Personal Learning Environment, postgraduate students, new technologies.