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retrieved, and the owner should be able to perform an effective critical analysis of
its contents. This is not so easy, for example to students, if they have not been
specifically trained. This paper focuses on how to foster student competences in
critical analysis of retrieved materials within a PLE, so to improve their 'learning
how to learn' skills, in a lifelong learning perspective.
The paper is organized as follows: in section 2 background literature is pre-
sented, then in sections 3 and 4 the most relevant aspects of the experience shall
be presented, together with gathered data and achieved results. Section 5 will
present the final conclusions and possible future developments.
2
Background Literature
The complexity of today's society obliges people to become lifelong learn-
ers[7][8], that is, to be able to complement any formal education they have re-
ceived with non-formal, personalized acquisition of new knowledge and skills.
Gaining such new knowledge (i.e. how to complement formal education) is now
an indispensable condition for any improvement in professional careers. The new
skills include the abilities of working in teams, of collecting information from var-
ious sources, and of performing critical analysis on such information.
Internet and the WWW obviously gave a new meaning, and new opportunities,
to the concepts of “Lifelong Learning”, "working together" and “sharing ideas and
projects”. By using networked computers, E-Learning communities established all
over the world, similarly to the “Communities of Practice” (COP) described by
Wenger[17], as “places” where participants continuously improve their knowledge
and expertise.
The needed skills of critical analysis and of arguing develop during adoles-
cence, as pointed out by Piaget[11] and Vygotsky[15][16]. In this perspective,
Bruner[2] claimed that social interactions and branches of learning are “boosters
of culture”, and the final purpose of School is to teach students to think in auton-
omy. “Think in autonomy” is the key competence in a Lifelong learning perspec-
tive, since the lifelong student has to build his/her own learning path, and he/she
should distinguish among the information reached which elements are useful - and
reliable. The technological counterpart of “thinking in autonomy” is a PLE, that is,
an agile learning structure, as described by Downes[4], Van Harmelen[14], At-
twell[1], Wilson[18] and Chatti[3]. It represents the opportunity for learners to
build a personal learning path. If a student has not developed his/her critical sense,
Jonassen[5][6] stated that the building of a learning path could be compromised,
by adopting false information as true.
Quoting the author “... The conundrum ... for instructional designers, however,
is that if each individual is responsible for knowledge construction, how can we as
designers determine and insure a common set of outcomes for learning, as we
have been taught to do? ...”.
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