Analysis Of The Future Professionals' Ples As Lifelong Learning Basic Skill: Presenting The Capple Project

Abstract

In this paper we want to present the CAPPLE Project, a research project centred on the exploration and understanding of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). In understanding PLEs one can find out a deficit in fundamental research concerning the structure and composition of learners PLE in higher education. The CAPPLE Project addresses this issue by describing and analysing the prospects for the personal learning environments (PLEs) of future Spanish professionals. It includes the analysis of this in technical, functional and graphical terms. The project is looking for the PLEs of the Spanish professionals with potentially an immediate incorporation into the labour market of every area of knowledge, in other words, senior students in Spanish universities. The main goal is not just to describe those PLEs, but trying to explore the underlying trends and models and, at the same time, discover the implications of these conclusions in the education in general and in the Spanish Higher Education Institutions, in particular. For its purposes, the project is using a mixed methodological approach in which that is going to apply a variety of research methods (expert discussions, survey, workshops, diagram analysis, and so on) in order to provide a strong research perspective that could guarantee the more solid research as possible. CAPPLE project in its first version is working with fundings from the National Ministry of Economy and Sustainability for three years (2013-2016. project reference EDU2012-33256). Therefore, in this paper our intention is to present it and give an overview about the methodological approach, the main tasks we are going to develop and the schedule we want to follow. The project we are presenting here, is an ambitious, complex and multidisciplinary project. This project can have a direct impact on the fundamental research on PLEs (modeling, analytical tools, naturalistic evidence of their existence, and so on), as well as on institutional strategies surrounding them, both for initial professional learning and also basic education.