Understanding Informal Personal Learning Environments: Towards Appreciating the Role of Technology-Enhanced Informal Learning in Higher Education

Abstract

Informal personal learning environments (IPLEs) are disrupting contemporary education, offering many opportunities for enhanced use of technology for learning. IPLEs facilitate learners’ needs via personalised learning goals and autonomous management of learning content, tools, and resources. While the literature indicates a rising awareness of learners’ capability to collect diverse and evolving technological tools to help assemble, organise, and process learning resources and create IPLEs, there is little emphasis on how learning is self-regulated within these IPLEs and how they contribute to the acquisition and development of learners’ digital literacy and self-regulated learning skills. To maximise the opportunities of IPLEs it is imperative to comprehensively understand their creation and use among learners and the impact these environments have on the learners digital and self-regulated learning skills. This mixed methods study framed by Activity Theory used quantitative and qualitative data obtained from undergraduates in a top university in New Zealand, to identify, understand, and describe the process through which learners are adapting and using digital technologies to create IPLEs and engage in learning. Structural equation modelling was used to test a hypothesised model of the reciprocal relationships between digital literacy and self-regulated learning skills within IPLEs. Thematic analysis of qualitative data obtained from individual and focus group interviews and mind maps of participant IPLEs supported by academic performance information for the interview participants was used to further investigate the interrelationships between the above constructs. This enabled understanding and describing the use of IPLEs as activity systems for self-regulated learning. This study demonstrates the applicability of Activity Theory as a comprehensive theoretical lens for investigating IPLEs. The findings extend the current knowledge by identifying the commonly used digital tools for creating IPLEs as well as the core functionality requisite of an IPLE. A fresh perspective on the use of digital tools for self-regulated learning is provided by identifying metacognitive, motivational, and behavioural affordances of tools for enabling self-regulated learning processes as well as the rules of trust, learner agency, and concern for safety which mediate the undergraduates’ interaction with the learning community when engaged in learning activities within the IPLE. Furthermore, roles adopted by learners within the IPLE together with opportunities for future growth within the IPLE which are apparent as contradictions within the IPLE activity system were identified. Contrary to existing knowledge of technology acceptance within technology-enhanced learning environments it was seen that operational and critical thinking ability, two components of digital literacy skills influenced technology acceptance within IPLEs. The qualitative and quantitative findings in conjunction indicate that the technical and social-emotional literacy components of digital literacy are positively reciprocally related to self-regulated learning within the IPLE. The qualitative findings suggest that cognitive literacy is also reciprocally related to undergraduates’ self-regulated learning skills. Hence, substantiating the prior theoretical claims made regarding reciprocity of self-regulated learning and digital literacy within technology-enhanced learning environments and elucidating the reasons for this reciprocity. The findings as a whole provide broad insights on how undergraduates exploit and control the technological environment that surrounds them for personalised self-regulated learning.