New Personal Learning Ecosystems

This chapter highlights over a decade of literature and research findings related to new learning ecosystems such as personal learning environments including MOOCs. New structures and environments are now in place that provide opportunities for learning in open networks, but important challenges and issues persist. This chapter also highlights challenges and opportunities in the design and development of MOOC learning experience design, conditions that must exist for people to be involved and engaged in a connectivist learning environment, challenges related to personalization and support of individual learning needs, along with new ethical and privacy concerns related to the safeguarding of data in networked environments. In conclusion, further research in areas of machine-learning AI in data-driven learning systems is discussed with emphasis on human factors such as motivation, incentives, and support that encourage course participation and learning.