The Analysis Of Educational Technology Students' Social Software-based Personal Learning Environments

With the development and popularity of Social Software, the Personal Learning Environments (PLE) extends to cyberspace from the real-life. Forms of learning have been changed essentially, and the learners are asked for higher requirements. Guided by the theory of social constructivism, the theory of dialogue learning and other related theories about knowledge management, this thesis summarizes a complete Social Software-based PLE model. and analyzes not only the differences between learning by Social Software and the distance learning in the past, but also the factors in the Social Software-based PLE. The paper finds out the factors which affect the PLE. This study is designed to provide operational recommendations to learners who build PLE themselves, and enhance the study efficiency of learners who use Social Software.At the beginning of the study, the research work is collect, collate and analyze the existing related materials about the history of the development of software and some relevant theories. This paper has a classified summary about kinds of the Social Softwares'effect in learning, and it also shows one PLE model. In the end, it comes to the key factor which affect the PLE according to the data of the online questionnaires, and the questionnaires were filled by Educational Technology (ET) learners who use the Social Software frequently.In the general overview, the paper expounds the research background, significance, national and foreign research situation, the feasibility of selecting the ET students as the survey, the characteristics of the Social Software-based PLE, as well as the methods, steps, the focus, difficulties and innovations of the study.Then it introduces the history and the development of the Social Software, the classification and comparison according to the effectiveness of the software, and two types of theoretical basis of Social Software, one kind of theories was relied on when the Social Software generated, the other one is applied to individual learning.This paper shows a flow about Social Software-based PLE according to the role played by the different types of Social Software. Through the comparison with the distance learning in the past. It analyses the practice changes about distance learning which brought by the Social Software. It also discusses the changes in the four elements (learners, learning tools, learning resources and learning services) in Social Software-based PLE.Finally, the survey data analysis shows that characteristics of learners have a certain impact on the construction of the PLE. Learners'level of awareness of Social Software, learning self-control, and the positive attitude to the four factors in the PLE are the same proportional effect with learning effects. This paper gives advice on the existing problems which were shown by the survey data.The innovations of this paper are the analysis of the factors in the PLE and the summarize about the differences between Social Software-based PLE and distance learning environment, which has a certain expansion of meaning. Besides, this paper shows some factors, which necessary to the PLE building, are found through the survey about learners'characteristics. That can be a guild to help learners'study.