An Exploratory Study Of The Personal Learning Environment Construction Among College Students Enrolled In An English For Academic Purposes Program

In the field of education,the prospering technologies have given prominence to the pedagogically shifted focus on learner autonomy,environment openness,information diversity,as well as knowledge personalization,all of which characterize the construction of a personal learning environment central to surviving the technology-skewed learning era.Drawing on this transformative nature of learning,this study sets out to explore the lived experiences of constructing personal learning environments among college students enrolled in a project-based English for Academic Purposes(EAP)writing course,where students are confronted with the forefront challenges in managing the blended language learning activities mediated by both traditional classroom course and technologies.Through prolonged observation of student performance as well as in-depth analysis of the multiple sets of qualitative data collected as regards their project-based,portfolio-aided and MOOC-incorporated learning experiences,this study discovers that,apart from satisfaction with the group project collaboration and recognition of the course-based learning resources’value,students have encountered a multiplicity of overwhelming problems including inactive class engagement,ineffective portfolio use,sluggish MOOC participation,and incompetent self-regulation as they wrestle with learning activities that concurrently take place in the classroom and online communities.Coupled with the discussion about three individual cases,it is indicated that constructing personal learning environments situated in the academic English context entails negotiability of multi-scaled social relations,robust group cohesion,appropriate instructor scaffolding and formal learning authenticity from an external perspective,as well as students’ capacity of enacting connectivism and critical self-regulation from an individual point of view.Findings of this study are expected to shed light on contextualizing the development of personal learning environments under the domain of English learning,facilitating instructor efforts to help learners adapt to the changing education landscape transformed by learning technologies,and above all,self-empowering students to become the central agents of their learning process.Finally,contextual,demographic and technological constraints of this study are acknowledged and future lines of research accordingly suggested.