Externalization of a PLE: Conceptual Design of LeContract

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) can be understood as an individual’s perception of the resources and activities in relation to a particular learning project. Such an understanding of the individual’s PLE can be externalized by following a personal learning contract procedure. Individuals themselves set up their objectives, select potential resources and design their learning strategy. Implementations of the learning contract procedure have shown that individuals would benefit from having guidance for explicating their learning objectives, procedures and resources. Generic tools (such as weblogs) that are often used for writing learning contracts do not provide this kind of scaffolding. In this paper we present the design process and conceptual design of LeContract tool, which attempts to support the personal learning contract procedure. LeContract provides structural templates that define important parts of the learning contract. During the learning project the contracts can be reviewed and the achievement of individual learning objectives can be evaluated.