Online collaboration takes on a new meaning when a learner is in complete control of the dialogue with advisors. This paper discusses the online Personal Learning Planner (PLP) project underway at the National Institute of Community Innovations (NICI), one of the partners in the Teacher Education Network (TEN), a 2000 PT3 Catalyst grantee. This paper presents some of the details of the theory, past experiences, and thinking that is guiding the development of the PLP. The Web-based software is part of the work by NICI to develop tools for enhancing preservice education and supporting increased use of technology, especially in Professional Development Schools (PDSs).

The online Personal Learning Planner (PLP) builds an electronic learning environment for creation, revision, and assessment of works-in-progress by aspiring teachers. It is based on a theory of dialogue recently articulated by Gibson and Friedrichs (Friedrichs, 2000; Friedrichs & Gibson, 2001). The theory of collaborative interaction for learning is consistent with several writers concerned with authenticity, use of technology to create problem-centered learning teams, representation of complex dynamics in educational settings, and e-learning (Carroll, 2000; Gibson, 1999; Gibson & Clarke, 2000; Newmann & Wehlage, 1995; Sherry & Myers, 1998; Stiggins, 1997; Wiggins, 1989; NSDC, 2001). It is also consistent with the experiences gained from The WEB Project, a 1995 Technology Innovation Challenge grant co-directed by Tavalin and Gibson, which provided part of the foundation for the TEN PT3 Catalyst grant. The WEB Project provided a rich research base with which to explore online dialogue and design conversations within a virtual community of learners and to define the path by which teachers progress from learners to leaders with technology (Sherry, 2000; Sherry, Tavalin, & Billig, 2000; Sherry, Billig, Tavalin, & Gibson, 2000).

Friedrichs (2000) discusses four distinct dialogue states that manifest themselves in the Personal Learning Planning process:

1. Sharing experience — listening to one’s own and others’ inner speech and natural attitude about a skill or concept;
2. Expressing and examining diverse concepts — recognizing conflicts; analyzing old and new concepts, models, and beliefs; working in one’s zone of proximal development;
3. Articulating applications and understandings — practicing new skills; combining old and new concepts; using others’ ideas; using scaffolds to renegotiate understandings; and
4. Communicating new powers and creations — celebrating effects of critical analysis.

The online Personal Learning Planner (PLP) provides a structure within an online working space with private and public access controlled by the learner to enable the above framework to work among a learner and any group of people serving as critical friends and advisors to the learner. With funding from the U.S. Department of Education under the PT3 program, NICI developed the first version of the PLP as a "critical friends" online space for future teachers who are assembling portfolios of evidence that they meet the standards required for a teaching credential or license. The PLP is designed to assist aspiring teachers through the processes of:

• Self-assessment of strengths, interests, and aspirations;
• Planning preservice education learning goals and projects;
• Linking goals and projects to valued outcome standards;
• Creating original work and sharing the work with others;
• Receiving high quality feedback for the improvement of their work;
• Documenting and validating the achievement of learning goals; and
• Assisting in the selection and preparation of exhibits of learning.

Future plans for the PLP include many other learner groups such as K-12 students and teachers, trainer-of-trainers programs, leadership programs, and groups as learners, for example, school-based action research teams using the site to develop collaborative products and seeking advice from remote experts to shape and validate the group’s work.

The lineage of the PLP comes from two sources. One source was a bold move by a local secondary school community in Montpelier, Vermont, which in 1993 placed "individualized educational plans for every student in their long term strategic plan. In 1995, this led to the creation and implementation of a schoolwide program to place personal learning at the center of a continuous conversation involving all students, their parents or guardians, and caring adults in a school. Support for the school-based development came from the University of Vermont. The writings of researchers and theorists such as Bentley (1999), Moffat (1998), Friedrichs (2000), and Gibson (1999, 2000) influenced the effort. In addition, early in its development, the concept of the Montpelier "PLP" was picked up by the Regional Laboratory at Brown University and combined with similar movements and interests in Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, and other New England states. In Maine, for example, the concept of personal learning took on a primary role in that state’s exciting new proposal for the reform of secondary schools. In other work of the Lab, the theme of personalization became a crucial feature of the secondary school reform network in the region, and was tied to the principles of "Breaking Ranks," the reform monograph of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Thus, the concept of personalization of learning as essential to educational reform is well founded in theory as well as in practice.

The other source was the pioneering work of The WEB Project, which made available Web-based tools and networked communities for original student work to be shared and critiqued online. The WEB Project established a system that linked ten participating schools and districts (including Montpelier High School) and multiple cooperating initiatives in online discussions of student work. Art and music students posted works in progress and received constructive feedback from community practitioners and learners, based on their articulated intentions for their works-in-progress. Middle school students from three schools across the state of Vermont conducted book discussions, facilitated by staff from the Vermont Center for the Book and their teachers. Teachers discussed challenges, conducted action research, shared results, and co-developed rubrics to assess process, progress, and outcomes. As a result, The WEB project contributed substantially to knowledge of effective practice for conducting online dialogue and design conversations.

Teachers affiliated with other practitioners in their discipline throughout the state via the participating initiatives and drew on their expertise. For example, art teachers and students shared online interactions with traditional artists, graphic artists, and multimedia designers; and music teachers and students carried on conversations with resident musicians, music teachers, and composers. The mentor-practitioners, in turn, were asked to give students feedback and essentially became co-instructors in the course. This learning community resembled an apprenticeship model, but it allowed for many mentors in asynchronous time.

The secrets of success of The WEB Project were many, but it is worth highlighting the learner-centered nature of the online dialogues and the singular focus on creation of original work (Sherry, 2000; Sherry, Tavalin, & Billig, 2000). In The WEB Project, "student work" included two important genres:

• student-created works of traditional art, digital art, multimedia, and music, supported by student-initiated design conversations with teachers, peers, and experts; and
• student-moderated dialogue with reflective, threaded discussions about assigned language arts texts that focused on controversial issues faced by middle school students.

In the design conversations, the entire sequence of activity only began if and when a student shared a work-in-progress and asked for specific feedback. If the work was shared too early, then the request for feedback and the ensuing online interactions with experts was too general and superficial. On the other hand, if the request for feedback came too late, when the work was already in its final form, the conversation accomplished nothing. However, if the student requested feedback at some optimum point when the work was already posted on The WEB Project’s Web site in draft form, and if he/she was able to articulate specific design problems that needed prompt attention, then the community of experts was able to provide a useful range of practical suggestions to be filtered, evaluated, and used for revision and refinement of the work-in-progress. These qualities of learner-centeredness, creativity, self-initiative, and intellectual focus were carried forward into the Web-based PLP.

The rationale for building a Web-based tool focused on the improvement of preservice teacher work has two parts. First, there is a need for feedback to come from a diverse audience, yet preservice and induction programs sometimes have limited resources and structures that produce scant feedback to aspiring teachers. As a result, an aspiring teacher’s work evolves in isolation, perpetuating the general conditions of teaching present in most schools today. A Web-based professional network can help overcome isolation; but even more importantly, it can provide the future teacher with high quality information that might not otherwise be available. The advantages of "any time, any place" access to experts is an obvious benefit of a Web-based tool.

The second rationale is the need for effective documentation of learning beyond paper and pencil formats. Ideally, documentation should be a record of the problems encountered and the subsequent decisions considered and made, as well as the validation of the work produced. In small, personalized programs, preservice teachers benefit from many interviews and observation/feedback sessions related to their work, but in many programs, that experience is limited to the last few months of preparation. An online PLP could help create a longitudinal multimedia record of growth and change in an aspiring teacher’s skills and capabilities. As such, the PLP could potentially document a future teacher’s progress through the learning/adoption trajectory (Sherry, Billig, Tavalin, & Gibson, 2000), from learner to adopter, co-learner, reaffirmer, and leader.

The sources of inspiration and rationale led us to ask, "What does preservice teacher work look like?" "What would happen if we could build a site for the improvement of a future teacher’s work?" and "Could the principles of personalization and helpful feedback in a professional network assist teacher education programs?" The online PLP is a way to pose answers to these kinds of questions.

One of the first questions often raised is whether online learning of any kind can truly be personal. One may respond, "Isn’t person-to-person or face-to-face the most personal way to learn?" or "Isn’t online work one of the most impersonal kinds of interaction between human beings?" There is no need to argue these points here, because e-learning is here to stay. It brings remote resources to the desktop any time, any place. Yes, e-learning is in its infancy. Yes, it lacks many important features needed for rich human communication, but so does writing, film, video, and even talking. Using new communication tools in learning is a matter of integration and balance. Its effectiveness depends mightily on the attributes of both the learner and the teacher. In spite of these challenges, e-learning is growing and evolving at a rapid pace.

The online PLP promotes a uniquely learner-centered approach to the challenge of integration and balance of technology in learning. The following basic assumptions guide the thinking behind the PLP.

The online PLP can be a powerful extension and helpmate in the "action research" process of planning, doing, reflecting, and consolidating knowledge.

1. Institutional priorities — our shared community goals;
2. Professional priorities — our scholarly traditions and expectations; and
3. Personal priorities — our source of deep meaning.

The learner’s productivity and self-efficacy is the ultimate goal of the online PLP. Work samples are the critical source for evidence of learning, the documentation of progress, and the verification that high standards have been achieved.

The learner’s productivity and self-efficacy is the ultimate goal of the online PLP. Work samples are the critical source for evidence of learning, the documentation of progress, and the verification that high standards have been achieved.

Learners produce better and are more highly motivated the more they have decision-making power over their learning. Learners gain from posing questions to advisors, and from knowing about, developing, and using a variety of learning assets — their strengths, interests, aspirations, and community and personal resources. All learning is a matter of making personal meaning out of the alternatives presented in experience.

Learners gain from scaffolding and assistance in stages and types of thinking: for example, divergent thinking, using multiple frameworks and perspectives, and the like.

The online PLP allows all media formats and a multiplicity of linkages among learning goals, projects, and the evidence of attainment of standards of performance. Distinct from electronic portfolios that concentrate on the presentation and storage of completed work; the PLP concentrates on the continuous improvement of work and the documentation of changes in work over time.

Three user levels and a Server Administrator level are provided. User levels include the Learner, Advisors, and a Program Administrator. The learner is in charge of his/her PLP. Learners create or choose goals, link them to standards or other external sources, create work that stands in relationship to the goals, make decisions on when both goals and work will be shared with advisors, and decide when work and goals are to be archived into permanent storage. Learners can make digital collections from their body of completed work. Each collection is presented as a self-contained Web site in which each work can independently be linked to reflections, summative evaluation, and new context-setting narrative and graphics.

Advisors are associated with one or more learners. When a learner’s goal or work is being shared for critique and feedback, the Advisor can discuss, offer direct edits, or validate the goal or work as adequate for its purpose. For example, a goal might be validated as appropriate for completion of a secondary teaching license in science, and a piece of work might be validated as evidence of achieving a standard of performance linked to one or more goals. The validation process can be formalized with rubrics or left as narrative. Any rubric can be linked with any piece of work as evidence. When a group of Advisors scores work using a common rubric, a summative rubric can then be built upon completion of their work.

The Program Administrator can review all Learner and Advisor records, add and delete Learners and Advisors, set defaults on the number of Advisors that need to agree in order for validation to be complete, create rubrics, create and edit standards, and make other selections associated with program management. The Server Administrator controls the hardware and communication decisions needed for site maintenance and archiving.

The use of the PLP as a team tool assumes that agency for a group operates much like it does for an individual, once internal communication and trust have been developed. Outside reviewers may be invited to become project advisors. As a collaborative tool, the PLP facilitates building a group’s history as well as a collection of validated work products.

Currently, the PLP exists as a functional "shell" on NICI’s server. However, plans are in place for a number of NICI’s Virtual PDS Consortium schools to pilot the PLP this fall within their respective teacher preparation programs.

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