A Case of an Institutional PLE: Integrating VLEs and E-Portfolios for Students

This paper presents an exploratory study of the potential for offering students elements to construct their own personal learning environments, through a combination of an eportfolio and integrated learning platform. The intention was to integrate an institutional virtual learning environment; an e-portfolio for assembling work, where the students can include ideas and reflections and create their own work; and social networks as powerful communication tools, particularly of an informal nature. The study aims to find out whether students think that an e-portfolio can improve project assignments when used in collaborative group work; whether this independent way of learning enriches collaborative work and reciprocity among the members of each group so that a knowledge-building process is generated in the case study in question; and whether using e-portfolios contributes more effectively to the achievement of the course’s proposed learning outcomes.