Learnt is a vehicle for the creation, gathering, reflection, and sharing of transformational [social] learning experiences. The learning experiences can range from informal (personal interests) to formal (within established curricula), but ultimately will help the learner develop an deep understanding of their learning style.

• enables the user to establish learning intent, adopt learning goals from a community of interest.
• lightweight data store that points to digital remnants of learning episodes that are disparate and housed in various media formats across the web (photos, blog entries, video clips, etc)
• an evaluation schema for learners based on self, peer, and community evaluation of effort, mastery, and final output
• an system of “learning capital” that mentors can obtain after completing learning events and publishing results
• community curation of premium content, and suggestion engine for rubrics.
• network of partnerships with content producers, who are providing 1) content, 2) suggested rubrics, and 3) evaluations that contribute to the evaluation schema

• reflection built-into user experience
• ease sharing of learning materials and experiences within interest-nets
• ability to deposit learning experiences from virtual and real-space in one’s record
• way for mentors to review and suggest learning paths
• flexible, rules-of-interest-net, engagement
• visualization tools showing progress toward-goal
• paths to create original content, gather existing content of yours and others, share your learning inside and out of your interest-net, and reflect on what you’ve learned
• user experience that leads you toward understanding your learning style
• advertising platform that delivers customized content relative to a learner’s interests based on learner privacy settings
• user’s records are exportable

• Work on phones, computers and special products like rfid enabled badges
• Encourage reflection
• Encourage social learning within interest nets
• Work for formal and informal learning, according to user’s choice at any given time
• Encourage independent developers to create application that follow elr principles
• Work for people ranging from ten years through adult life
• Have a business model that is self sustaining

In the Spring semester at the ID, MDes students Alfred Lui and Susan Stirling in a strategic design research class taught by John Grimes, Patrick Whitney, and Kevin Denney, spent time iterating through a looks like prototype for what the ELR could be. One of the primary goals was to work on integrating business models into the prototype.

The results of the prototype are shown below:
Spring 2008 Electronic Learning Record Looks Like Prototype

At the same time, Kevin Denney was conducting a still-pic study with adult learners to identify if there was a difference between adult learners and adolescent learners as they progressed through a particular interest or hobby. Through the research about informal learning, Kevin determined that interest nets were a key component to how people learn. Furthermore, it became clear that these interest nets are relatively small.

In an effort to understand how groups collaborate for learning and reflect on their experiences together, we are performing research on mentors in the Digital Youth Network at the University of Chicago Charter school.

The learning mentors, 6 in total, are persistent throughout the development of the students at the Charter school, helping them integrate various aspects of digital media into their projects. We find the mentors to be ripe room for investigation because there is very little academic research we have found about mentorship as it relates to a learning portfolio oriented approach.

Understanding what users are trying to do, in the absence of tools that we’re trying to build is a strong way to make sure that unmet needs can be fulfilled– and that we’re heading in the right direction!

Using the work on value webs done by Ash Bhoopathy and David Sonders, in the Spring of ‘08, Kevin did a further business model analysis to uncover the essential attributes of companies we admire.  This analysis lead to several conclusions including;  the ELR should be a for-profit organization and that four business platforms should be developed as the core of the operation.

1. Discovery Platform

Relies on systems of mentoring and connecting communities

of interest in space & time

2. Connection Platform

Relies on geo-spatial awareness tied to goals, learning

style, and access to the ether of data

3. User Innovation Platform

Relies on systems with tools, community, and active encouragement

of bottom-up innovation

4. Collaboration Platform

The whole system requires standards and partnerships

business model analysis

This is a first pass at understanding goal setting in personal learning. The two large question marks are voids in our knowledge of how goals are established, but we are more certain that implicit goals are largely used in the areas of informal learning, and explicit goals are used in the realm of formal education.

As we are trying to understand how learners evaluate progress, it helped us to think about it through this evaluation matrix.

Learners typically evaluate themselves comparatively relative to other learners by means of external tools like tests. (which we know now is extrinsic motivation mostly). Mostly, this is intended to evaluate mastery of a certain material. Projects that involve creation or synthesis require an evaluation of effort as well as an objective look at the final output of the project.

As we move down the matrix, we understand the evaluation types that can be conducted by others (Peers in a group, as well as the community or a larger body of certification).

We will develop this framework further by understanding some of the different modes that this is accomplished now (A descriptive view of the user), and add on what we suggest learners could do to augment their current evaluation ability.