Higher education students' personal learning environment usage and an applicaton of a new tool

Students can learn in 'personal learning environments' by themselves by using 'self-regulated learning' skills. So ability to use 'perslonal learning environments' is a key skill for life long learning. In this study, one aim is to understand higher education students' use of personal learning enviorments and their related profiles. For this reason researcher developed a personal learning environment tool and a group of students use it for a term in a course. Then, they reported their perceptions toward both this tool and the personal learning environments. The findings give detailed ideas about their use of such environments. In general, they reported positive feelings but there were some negative feelings as well. Morever, one of the good personal learning environment tool could be 'massive open online course' (MOOC) that is evolved in last decade. One recent approach is to use them to support traditional courses. In this study, researcher conducted a 'hybrid massive open online course' study for 10 weeks in 'introduction to database management systems' course. Students studied half of the course in classroom and they studied the other half in a MOOC. After application, they reported their positive and negative feelings toward the method. Athough some negative feelings existed, they mainly had positive perceptions toward the method. In addition, their achievements compared with the achievements of students who took the course fully on campus. Athogh treatment groups' achievement was slightly higher, this difference was not significant. Moreover, their self-regulation skill was measured before and after the application. But in such period, it was not increased. But importantly, their self-regulation profile scores and their positive perceptions toward this method (more understandable, less time consuming, more learnable, more flexible) found positively correlated. So, students who have higher self regulation skills possibly found this method more feasible and this finding is important.