(78)DESIGN OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR INFORMALLEARNING IN E-SCIENCE AND E-BUSINESS FROM A LEARNERS’POSITION

摘要

Whenever developers design tools for e-learning (i.e. Learning Management Systems(LMS), Personal Learning Environments (PLE), web portals), network theories as well asdidactic concepts play an important role in the design process. Social ideas of web 2.0offer huge possibilities for implementing social or knowledge networks, user generatedcontent etc. Unfortunately, users or rather, learners and their needs, are, to a largeextent, only partly, or even not at all involved in the design process. On the other hand,informal learning becomes more and more important, especially in the framework ofhigher education and business enterprises where lifelong learning is one of the most upto-date future trends. Consequently, tools and learning environments for informal learningneed to be designed in a way that enables learners to extend their knowledge inreasonable time and with reasonable effort. They need to be designed like learners usethem. To meet these demands, learners should be involved in the process of designingand implementation from the very beginning. Further, tools for informal learning should beable to support learners which means, they need to generate awareness for the learningexperience as well as scaffold learners during the process of learning. Starting with anexample of an e-learning web portal (http://sugi.d-grid.de/), developed for informaltraining in e-business and e-science within the German Grid Community (D-Grid), we willshow how we merged the approaches of a scaffolded prototype design and collaborativedesign involving users from scratch. During the project runtime, technology has beendeveloped, and new tools have gained high popularity. Thus, we decided to introduceand discuss two contrasting, distributed and network based approaches, both marked bydecentralized storage of content as well as organizing knowledge with tags. The questionof how to unite recent constructivist learning theories with efficient outcomes of thelearning process through an exhaustive consideration of learners’ demands and thecomplex and particular situation of informal learning in a scientific high quality context todevelop a lean and intuitively usable system, was a central issue.