Utilizing the personal learning environment for English as a foreign language within the scope of open and distance learning

With the advent of internet in academic areas, Personal Learning Environments have become tools which enable personal learning to be planned and shared. These environments, designed upon Web 2.0 tools, can be regarded as the platforms through which distance learners choose, keep, work on and share information with others according to their learning needs. Personal Learning Environments considered to have a huge impact on personal learning as combined platforms, support Distance Education with its unique form that allows designing personalized syllabi and online participation within a networked structure. Moreover, foreign language learning is a necessary skill especially for distant learners. Adult learners who have to learn out of campus due to financial restrictions or time limitations can organize their own Personal Learning Environments for foreign language learning through Web 2.0 tools which are constantly being developed. When language learning is evaluated within the scope of Open and Distance Learning, the focus of this dissertation includes exploring Personal Learning Environments for learning English as a foreign language, interpreting lifelong self-improvement of learners and productivity, and proposing a framework for a sample Personal Learning Environment that could also be used for future studies. This study, in which the tutor takes an active guiding role, assesses what the learning outcomes are for distant learners who are studying off-campus within a Personal Learning Environment, what they need, how the environment should be designed and how to create a holistic system that will help the environment to be used for English learning. All those evaluations were carried out within the framework of five cycles of design-based research namely Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation. In the Analysis phase, the first research question related to the characteristics of a Personal Learning Environment was tried to be explained, in the Design phase, the findings in relation with the second research question reagrding how learners' Personal Learning Environments should be designed were collected and finally third research question was answered with the opinions of distant learners in order to create a holistic system that will be used in learning English. Qualitative data were collected and analyzed during the design-based research process. Depending on the research findings, each learner has a different learning experience from the other learner and therefore the Personal Learning Environment must be unique for each individual.