Article Personalized Integrated Educational System: Technology Functions for the LearnerCentered Paradigm of Education Journal of Educational Computing Research 2015, Vol. 53(3) 459–496 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0735633115603998 jec.sagepub.com Charles M. Reigeluth1, Sinem Aslan2, Zengguan Chen3, Pratima Dutta4, Yeol Huh5, Dabae Lee6, Chun-Yi Lin7, Ya-Huei Lu5, Mina Min5, Verily Tan5, Sunnie Lee Watson8, and William R. Watson8 Abstract The learner-centered paradigm of instruction differs in such fundamental ways from the teacher-centered paradigm that it requires technology to serve very different functions. In 2006, a research team at Indiana University began to work on identifying those functions and published their results in 2008. Subsequently, the team elaborated and refined those functional specifications, which are described herein as the Personalized Integrated Educational System (PIES), a technology system that has not yet been developed to support learner-centered education. The four major 1 Instructional Systems Technology Department, School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, USA 3 Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA 4 California State University, Northridge, CA, USA 5 Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA 6 Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA 7 Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan, USA 8 Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA 2 Corresponding Author: Charles M. Reigeluth, Instructional Systems Technology Department, School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. Email: reigelut@indiana.edu 460 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) functions are recordkeeping for student learning, planning for student learning, instruction for student learning, and assessment for and of student learning. Secondary functions include communication and collaboration, PIES administration, and improvement of PIES. Each of these functions is described in detail, followed by specifications for the system architecture, including interoperability, modularity, and customizability. Keywords intelligent tutoring systems, interactive learning environments, interdisciplinary projects, multimedia or hypermedia systems, pedagogical issues Much has been written about the need for changing the paradigm of education from the sorting-focused, industrial-age, factory model of schools to the learning-focused, information-age, learner-centered paradigm, and there is growing evidence that paradigm change is the only way to significantly improve educational systems for a postindustrial society (Banathy, 1991; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Branson, 1987; Bush & Mott, 2009; Caine & Caine, 1997; Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2008; Covington, 1996; DarlingHammond, 1990, 2002; Education Commission of the States, 1996; Fullan, 1993, 1999, 2003; Lieberman, 1995; McCombs, 2013; McCombs & Whisler, 1997; National Commission of Excellence in Education, 1983; National Education Commission on Time and Learning, 1994; Office of Technology Assessment, 1995; Perkins, 1992; Reigeluth & Garfinkle, 1994; Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013; Sarason, 1990; Schlechty, 2001, 2005; Senge, 2000; Sizer, 1985; Toffler, 1980, 1990; Wagner, 1994, 2002; W. Watson, S. Watson, & Reigeluth, 2013; Yonezawa, McClure, & Jones, 2012). The learner-centered paradigm marks the following shifts: From time-based student progress to competency-based student progress, From norm-referenced tests to criterion-referenced tests, From standardization to personalization, From teacher as sage on the stage to teacher as guide on the side, From decontextualized content in the disciplines to authentic interdisciplinary projects, . From students as passive and teacher-directed to students as active and selfdirected learners, . From teacher planning to a personal learning plan for every student, . And much more (Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013). . . . . . However, for the learner-centered paradigm to work well and cost-effectively, powerful technological tools are crucial for several reasons (McCombs & Vakili, 2005; Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013). First, they save huge amounts of teacher 461 Reigeluth et al. time, making it possible and cost-effective for teachers to provide truly personalized, attainment-based instruction and assessment. Second, they afford immersive project environments that enhance student motivation. Third, they provide infinitely patient and soundly designed tutorials at the moment a student needs them. This article offers suggestions for many of the functions that such tools need to serve. In 2006, a research team at Indiana University began to work on identifying the functions that technology should serve to support the learner-centered paradigm of education. This resulted in several research studies (An & Reigeluth, 2011; Aslan, 2012; Aslan, Huh, Lee, & Reigeluth, 2011; Dutta, 2013; Yildirim, Reigeluth, Kwon, Kageto, & Shao, 2013) and a set of design specifications for an integrated technology system (Reigeluth, S. Watson, W. Watson, Dutta, Chen, & Powell, 2008), which was subsequently called the Personalized Integrated Educational System (PIES) (Reigeluth, 2014; W. Watson, S. Watson, & Reigeluth, 2012), because it is designed specifically for personalized instruction, and it requires seamless integration of the full range of functions needed to support student learning. As the team continued this work and learned more from our research, we saw the need for significant enhancements to those initial specifications. One way to think about PIES is in terms of: . . . . functions functions functions functions to to to to support support support support teachers, administrators, parents, and students. Clearly, there is overlap among these functions, but in this article, we focus on functions to support students, which is most important in the learner-centered paradigm of education. We still see four major functions and several secondary functions to support students, all of which should be seamlessly integrated into a single, open-architecture system. The major functions include the following: . . . . recordkeeping for student learning, planning for student learning, instruction for student learning, and assessment for (and of) student learning. The secondary functions include communication and collaboration, PIES administration, and improvement of PIES. The major changes to PIES from the previous version are shown in Table 1. In this article, each of PIES’ major and secondary functions is discussed, followed by a description of the architecture for PIES. Figure 1 shows an information schematic of this proposed technology system. 462 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) Table 1. Major Changes From the Previous Version of PIES. Function Recordkeeping Subfunction Standards inventory Personal attainments inventory Personal characteristics Planning School- and grouplevel planning Long-term goals Prospective attainments Short-term goals Projects Teams Supporting roles Contracts Major changes ! Clarifies that standards are broken down to individual competencies or other attainments. ! Adds Prensky’s new paradigm of curriculum. ! Degrees of mastery are addressed. ! Student ownership of the inventory is affirmed (portability). ! Individual and team products are shareable. ! No changes. ! Adds two levels of planning beyond the individual level: the school level (annual theme, plays, fairs, exhibits) and the advisory group level (culture, teachable moments, life problems). ! Clarifies connection with the personal characteristics inventory, along with suggestions for instrumental attainments and other supports. ! Changes the name from “current options” for greater clarity. ! Adds the rationale for project periods, along with ways the rate of student learning is made flexible within project periods of a fixed length. ! Now helps students to design their own projects or activities, as an alternative to help in selecting them. ! Helps an advisory committee to modify a selected project. ! Helps an advisory committee decide if a project will be done solo, collaboratively in same role, or cooperatively in different roles, and selection of the student’s role. ! Describes the project bank (database), along with metadata, service-learning projects, and exemplary artifacts. ! No changes. ! Identifies additional nonteammates who may help the student learn. ! Adds the student level (a second level of contracts) to the project or activity level. (continued) 463 Reigeluth et al. Table 1. Continued Function Subfunction Major changes ! Specifies the contents of a project or activity contract in greater detail. ! Allows for modifications to a contract. ! Specifies connection with a project-management subfunction. Instruction Projects Scaffolding Assessment Integrated performance Individual learning ! Provides more details about the projects subfunction, especially for student-designed projects. ! Adds provision of a virtual project environment (simulation or virtual world) with a virtual coach. ! For real-world project environments, adds project elements and tools, as well as a virtual coach. ! Specifically mentions subfunctions for student collaboration, production, presentation, and reflection. ! Adds a subfunction to help students find, evaluate, organize, and store information and resources. ! Adds a subfunction to help resolve team conflicts. ! Expands on instruction to include coaching. ! Describes ways instruction is triggered. ! Expands on how the instruction is personalized. ! Describes how PIES fosters learning metacognitive skills, curiosity, creativity, character development, and more. ! Describes access to PIES anywhere, anytime, with any device. ! Describes access to OERs. ! Adds a second level of assessment beyond the individual—the team—which is assessed in the project environment. ! Adds team self-reflection, peer evaluation, and expert evaluation as assessment tools. ! Adds digital badges or certificates. (continued) 464 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) Table 1. Continued Function Secondary functions Subfunction Communication and collaboration PIES administration Improvement of PIES System architecture New section Major changes ! No notable changes. ! Reorganizes access, general student data, and personnel data into this category. ! No other notable changes were made. ! Adds capability for PIES to evaluate and improve all its functions and add new ones as needed. Subfunctions for developing and improving instruction and assessments were moved here and elaborated a bit. ! Adds capability for users to customize their portals. ! Describes such features as cloud-based, five databases, interoperability, modularity, and customizability. Note. PIES ¼ Personalized Integrated Educational System; OER ¼ open educational resource. Recordkeeping for Student Learning Competency-based student progress is not possible without keeping track of what each student has learned. Report cards or transcripts serve a parallel function in the sorting-focused, industrial-age paradigm of education, except that these do not tell you specifically what each student has learned, only how well the student has done compared with other students in the class. The recordkeeping function of PIES replaces report cards and provides detailed information about student learning. PIES keeps three types of records: (a) a standards inventory that includes all the attainments that students must or could achieve, including academic and nonacademic ones, (b) a personal attainments inventory that includes all those attainments that each student has already achieved, along with useful learning analytics for each attainment, and (c) a personal characteristics inventory that contains each student’s personal characteristics that are pertinent to student learning. Standards Inventory The standards inventory keeps a list of all required and optional academic and nonacademic standards, offered by any source—national, state, local, and Reigeluth et al. 465 Figure 1. PIES information schematic. OED ¼ open educational database; OER ¼ open educational resource; SID ¼ Standards Inventory Database; SPD ¼ Student Profiles Database; TSD ¼ Teammate Selection Database; PD ¼ Projects Database; IMD ¼ Instructional Modules Database; PIES ¼ Personalized Integrated Educational System. personal. The standards are broken down in a hierarchical manner to individual attainments such as skills, understandings, dispositions, and so on. The standards inventory displays the attainments in a customizable domain map or chart format based on domain theory (Bunderson, Wiley, & McBride, 2009). Each domain map includes (a) major attainments with boundaries showing the easiest and hardest version of each attainment, (b) categories of attainments, where each category represents a pathway for learning, and (c) a difficulty-based sequence of attainments along each pathway. For each attainment in the map, there is an indication as to whether it is a required standard, and if so, what level of difficulty is required. This map enables the learner to navigate through the attainments within each subject domain such that when the learner masters one attainment, the map indicates the more advanced attainments that are now within reach—Vygotsky’s (1978) “zone of proximal development” (see Planning for Student Learning section). 466 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) The standards inventory includes such currently optional standards as social, emotional, and character development (Goleman, 1995, 1998; Lewis, Watson, & Schaps, 1999; Lickona, 1991). Examples of a wide range of educational standards are offered by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (n.d.), the International Society for Technology in Education (2007), the U.S. Department of Labor (1991), the Common Core (http://www.corestandards. org), and individuals like Daniel Goleman (1995, 1998) and Thomas Lickona (1991). However, most of these standards need to be further broken down into individual attainments. Prensky (2014) has proposed organizing standards around the four key pillars of thinking effectively, acting effectively, relating effectively, and accomplishing effectively rather than the current four pillars of math, language arts, science, and social studies. This represents a truly different and very promising paradigm of curriculum. Teachers and other experts who are involved in student learning can customize the standards inventory based on student needs such as learning gaps and cross-disciplinary understanding (Dutta, 2013). In essence, the standards inventory presents a list of things that should or can be learned, along with levels, standards, and criteria at which they should or could be learned. Personal Attainments Inventory This inventory supports student learning by keeping track of each student’s progress on attainments. Portions of the domain map in the standards inventory are displayed in each student’s personal attainments inventory. The student’s progress is indicated, for example, by an attainment in the map automatically turning a darker and darker shade from when a student starts working on it, to when he or she masters it, along with date and time mastered and access to learning analytics that provide the complete history of his or her work on it, as in the Khan Academy. This way, all the authorized stakeholders (i.e., student, teachers, and parents) can easily see how the student is doing and offer support when needed. Also, a community may want all children to be able to do certain things by a certain age, especially for basic skills, to make sure that students are not overlooking foundational skills and knowledge. Thus, it may be important to foster some well-rounded development, rather than letting a student exclusively study things that he or she wants when he or she wants, so the personal attainments inventory can also report the student’s attainments compared with target ages (if any) for mastery of required standards (adjusted automatically by the student’s average speed of learning, which is continuously tracked by PIES over time). Each attainment, or set of related attainments, is linked to a repository of evidence of its mastery in the form of summary data or original artifacts that are automatically tagged according to the learning goals (Garrett, Thoms, Alrushiedat, & Ryan, 2009). Tags help students easily organize and find their Reigeluth et al. 467 artifacts and allow the student to easily pull out selected artifacts into different e-portfolios for different purposes (exportability). Students can choose to make parts of their evidence visible to selected others or the public in general. Project and module developers can link to the evidence (with student permission) to showcase their instructional modules. Furthermore, the personal attainments inventory belongs to the student, not the school system, so the student can use it throughout his or her life as a tool for lifelong learning. In addition, a sharing feature is provided in the personal attainments inventory. An individual student or a team can set a final artifact or a video of their performance for public display, in which case it is publicly posted and searchable by the school community. The student or teacher uses a tagging function so the audience can navigate easily to the most appropriate products. When made public, the product can also be linked to the project in the project bank (see Instruction for Student Learning section) as a legacy (Schwartz, Lin, Brophy, & Bransford, 1999) for future students to access, either locally or broadly. Lastly, for all the records of these personal attainments, the student can flexibly control access and levels of security. For example, while a student, his or her teachers, and his or her parents have full access to the records, the student could give potential employers or community members limited or no access. Personal Characteristics Inventory The personal characteristics inventory keeps record of each student’s personal characteristics that are useful for promoting student learning. These characteristics are different from general student data, such as address, birthdate, and information about parents or guardians. Personal characteristics include learning styles, profile of multiple intelligences, special needs, major life events, career goals and interests, and so forth. Personal characteristics are continuously updated through surveys and automatic collection of data from the instruction and assessment functions of PIES about which instructional methods work well for each student. Personal characteristics are useful for (a) decisions about learning goals and objectives, (b) teacher coaching and advising for the student, and (c) customization of PIES’ tutorials, simulations, and even projects. The student owns and can flexibly control access to this inventory for security and privacy reasons. Level of access is typically granted depending on the relationship with the student. For example, parents or legal guardians, teachers, and students themselves are usually granted full access. However, students may give limited or no access to community mentors and other teachers and administrators. Clearly, a customized paradigm of education requires keeping a lot of records. PIES greatly alleviates the time, drudgery, and expense of maintaining and 468 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) accessing those records. It helps ensure that appropriate standards are being met while customized attainments are achieved by each student. Planning for Student Learning Planning is one of the most important components of the learning process. “By engaging in preparation and planning in relation to a learning goal, students are thinking about what they need or want to accomplish and how they intend to go about accomplishing it” (N. J. Anderson, 2002, p. 3). While planning was one of the major responsibilities of teachers in the industrial-age paradigm of education, the learner-centered paradigm requires students and even parents to be actively involved in the planning process with guidance from the teacher. Planning for student learning in the new paradigm needs to take place on three different levels: school, learning group (traditionally called a classroom or homeroom), and individual student. At the school level, many schools want to have an annual school theme that is consistent with the overarching philosophy, mission, and vision of the school. All planning activities can then be informed by overarching school-wide academic and social themes (Dutta, 2013). For example, the Project School in Bloomington, IN, chose “power” as its theme one year, addressing such questions as what power is, how it moves, what it looks like from different perspectives, how it keeps things the same, and so forth. PIES’ planning function helps all the teachers in a school to select and use an appropriate and powerful theme. It also helps for planning other aspects of school life, such as school plays, science fairs, art exhibits, and much more. At the advisory group level, each mentor teacher1 (often called a facilitator, guide, or advisor due to the radically different role) should plan ways in which all of that teacher’s students can learn together in a collaborative environment. PIES’ planning function helps each teacher decide on an appropriate culture or climate for the homeroom or workspace and ways to establish and maintain that culture, such as establishing ground rules collaboratively with the students and preparing in advance for the teacher to deal with typical events that may threaten that culture. The planning function also provides advice on how to recognize and take advantage of “teachable moments” that can address emotional, social, and character development issues. The function helps in diagnosing the causes of academic and social or emotional problems that arise and recommends alternative actions for dealing effectively with those problems. The function can use both keyword search and menu-driven decision tree to accomplish this. At the individual student level, each student needs a personal learning plan that sets out learning goals and ways to meet them. The planning function helps each student’s advisory committee (the student, his or her parents, and mentor teacher) to collaboratively decide on career goals, long-term and short-term learning goals, projects, teams, supporting roles, and learning contracts. Reigeluth et al. 469 Each of these subfunctions of individual student planning is described in detail in the following sections. Career and Long-Term Learning Goals Research by Schutz and Lanehart (1994) found that, “when long-term educational goals were accompanied by attempts at day-to-day educational sub-goals and useful learning strategies, high academic performance tended to occur” (p. 407). The career and long-term learning goals subfunction in PIES helps each student’s advisory committee collaboratively decide on long-term life goals and interests as well as career goals, which can be a powerful force in motivating the student to learn, even during early childhood. First, the subfunction helps each student to explore career options. Questionnaires and existing information about the student’s interests and aptitudes are used to suggest careers that the student might want to explore. The student can then learn more about each of those careers through interactive video vignettes showing “a day in the life” of a person in that career. Because students typically change their life and career goals and interests often, the subfunction encourages each student to rethink or reaffirm his or her career goals on a regular basis. The student may also select more than one life or career goal if he or she has more than one area of interest. Second, when the student selects an appropriate career goal, it is entered into the student’s personal characteristics inventory (along with all information about the student’s interests and aptitudes), as such information can improve instruction. The subfunction provides the student with information about the kinds of attainments one needs to achieve to succeed in that career, and those attainments are then listed as long-term learning goals. For older students, the subfunction provides information about potential community mentors2 (e.g., a local engineer), grants, and scholarships to help them accomplish their long-term learning goals in pursuit of their career goals. The planning function can generate annual or semiannual reports on the progress each student has made toward achieving his or her long-term goals. Goal setting is an important aspect of self-directed learning and consequently life-long learning (Zimmerman, 2002). Current Prospective Attainments Previously referred to as current options in the article by Reigeluth et al. (2008), current prospective attainments are the full range of required and optional standards (defined broadly as all kinds of learning and development) that are within reach for each individual student—ones that the student can learn without first learning other standards. PIES’ planning function does this by comparing a student’s personal attainments inventory (the student’s current attainments) 470 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) with the standards inventory (all required and optional attainments) to generate a comprehensive list or map of sets of attainments that the student could choose to work on next without overreaching. The student’s advisory committee also has the option of adding, revising, or deleting attainments on the list. Based on the student’s progress as measured by the assessment function (see Assessment for and of Student Learning section), the list is updated automatically by the system. Short-Term Learning Goals This subfunction helps the student’s advisory committee to select, from the list of current prospective attainments, those attainments that the student will work on next, based on the students’ long-term learning goals, interests, opportunities, requirements, parents’ values, and so forth. These short-term learning goals include all dimensions of human development—social, emotional, physical or health, ethical, artistic, and psychological, as well as intellectual. For example, some short-term goals may be established for helping others through volunteer work in the community. In the move away from time-based student progress, we envision that most school systems will establish project periods, for several reasons. First, it would be difficult for students to form different groups for new projects if there are not set dates for the beginning of projects. Second, in the real world, people need to meet project deadlines, so it is important to prepare students for that. Third, human nature is to not get things done until they are due, so having a deadline is a motivational issue. With project periods, rate of student learning is adjusted through selection of the number and scope of projects undertaken during a project period. Faster learners can undertake more projects and larger projects. Records of how many hours per week a project has taken, on average, are adjusted by PIES for each student’s history of rate of learning, to help select an appropriate learning load for each student. The length of the project period is determined by the school but differs depending on the developmental level of the learners—at lower levels, project periods are shorter. At the beginning of each project period, short-term goals are chosen by the student’s advisory committee (mostly by the student with guidance from the rest of the committee). Projects and Other Activities Project-based learning is an important part of the learner-centered paradigm of education (McCombs, 2008; Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013; United States Department of Education, 2010; Wolf, 2010), primarily because it can greatly enhance learner motivation and facilitate transfer of what is learned to the real world. Reigeluth et al. 471 PIES’ planning function helps a student to select or design projects or other activities (e.g., readings with discussions, or tutorials) to attain his or her short-term learning goals. For selection, it uses those goals to identify projects or other activities through which the student could attain those goals. It rankorders those projects or activities on the basis of how many short-term goals each addresses; how well it aligns with the school’s mission, vision, core principles, and current theme; and how well it aligns with the student’s interests. The student then selects (with input from his or her advisory committee) whatever combination of projects or activities he or she wants, based on customized weekly time estimates for each project. User ratings similar to those in Amazon also help the student to make good choices. After one project or activity is selected, PIES updates the rank-order of projects or activities for the remaining short-term goals, and the student selects additional projects or activities until the student’s available time is filled. Alternatively, if the student’s advisory committee wants the student to design his or her own projects or other activities, the planning function helps him or her to design them based on his or her short-term learning goals; the school’s mission, vision, core principles, and current theme; the student’s interests, and current opportunities. If a project is selected, the planning function allows the student (and his or her advisory committee) to customize and tailor project attributes, requirements, and assessment criteria to fully address his or her relevant short-term learning goals and interests. For example, it allows the committee to select such methods of assessment as products, reports, presentations, contests, single expert review, panel of experts, and public display of each project. The function helps the advisory committee decide whether a project will be done solo, or collaboratively with all teammates sharing the same role, or cooperatively with each teammate performing a different role. If the latter, the function suggests roles that are best aligned with the student’s short-term goals and personal characteristics. The function also estimates the average number of hours per week to complete the project in the selected role given the length of the school’s project period, and it adjusts that based on the student’s speed of performance on prior projects. The project “bank” or database on which the planning function draws is updated as new projects are posted by all advisory committees worldwide and even by local community members. Improvements to, or variations on, old projects can also be posted. Because service learning is a key tenet of the learner-centered paradigm (Billig, 2000; Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013), the planning function allows community organizations and businesses to post upcoming projects to the local or regional section of the project bank. The project bank also stores a variety of metadata for each project, such as the short-term learning goals (or attainments) that each project addresses, 472 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) assessment criteria and standards of performance, recommended methods of assessment (e.g., contests, single expert, panel of experts, public display), whether the project requires multiple roles, average number of hours required for each role, previous students’ evaluations of the project, and previous students’ products if they choose to make them public (through each school’s repository, where the student and advisory committee can evaluate the products using a system similar to that used by Amazon customers to rate their purchases, and PIES can automatically generate a list of exemplary products). This also allows teachers to select exemplary artifacts to showcase student learning in their school. For some short-term goals, such as learning about philosophy, a project may not be the most appropriate vehicle for meeting the goals. In such cases, PIES’ planning function helps the advisory committee to plan other kinds of activities for meeting the goals. Teams Students may occasionally choose to do solo projects, though advisory committees ensure that their students engage in sufficient team projects to develop high levels of collaboration and conflict resolution skills. Literature suggests that when students are collaborating with peers on academic tasks, they show higher intellectual performance than when working alone (Bandura, 1986; Vygotsky, 1978). Bruner (1985) also stated that students enhance their problem-solving skills through cooperation, as they have more opportunities for interpreting given problems. For team projects, the planning function identifies other students who are interested in doing the same project during the same project period, and if different roles are needed, it identifies students interested in each role. Then, the function helps the students select teammates who are in the same or even different schools. Teachers, schools, or even districts can add criteria to this selection process that ensure students don’t only collaborate with their best friends—that they also team up with students of different gender, ability, compatibility, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. PIES also uses personality inventories (e.g., Myers–Briggs) to help students understand why their teammates may behave quite differently and how to deal with that. Supporting Roles This subfunction in PIES helps the student’s advisory committee to identify people—including themselves as well as other teachers, community or academic experts, senior students, parents, and guardians—to play supporting roles in helping the student learn from each project or other activity and helps them to define those roles. Reigeluth et al. 473 Learning Contracts “Learning contracts are practical devices helping one to bridge the gap between curricular requirements and self-initiated and self-directed learning” (Motschnig-Pitrik, Derntl, & Mangler, 2003). Each school or district establishes a project period appropriate for the developmental stage(s) of its students. Having the same start time makes it possible to form new teams for new projects. However, some projects span two project periods, and individual projects may span a fraction of a period. All local schools at the higher developmental levels typically coordinate the length and timing of project periods so that their students can collaborate with students from other schools. As an essential part of the planning process, the learning contracts subfunction in PIES helps the advisory committee to develop learning contracts at two different levels: the student (or advisory committee) level and the project or activity level. At the student level, the contract specifies the short-term learning goals and all the projects or activities for a given project period. At the project or activity level, it is prepared and signed by all teammates and external collaborators (if any) and specifies the following for each project or activity: short-term learning goals, teammates (if any), student roles and responsibilities, mentor roles, roles of any external collaborators, deadlines, milestones, resources, assessment criteria, methods of assessment, and criteria for modifying the contract. Any modifications must be submitted through this function and be approved by the advisory committee. This learning contracts subfunction is linked with a subfunction that helps students and their advisory committees manage each project in the contract (see Provides a virtual project environment section). Instruction for Student Learning PIES’ instruction function contains subfunctions for projects and for scaffolding. It has a project database, a coaching database, and an instructional module database whose instructional modules are linked to specific points in projects when the instruction is needed just-in-time (JIT). Projects The projects subfunction (a) introduces projects to the student, (b) provides an authentic virtual environment within which to conduct the project or alternatively provides project elements that enhance real (community-based) project environments, (c) helps students organize and manage their projects (time and resources), and (d) helps teachers monitor the projects. It also (e) helps students collaborate with peers using various documentation and communication tools and (f) guides students to resolve conflicts that arise during teamwork. 474 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) Introduces projects. The projects subfunction introduces the project to students or helps teachers do so. Alternatively, it can help students initiate a project of their own design by helping them choose and use a checklist of considerations for initiating their project. Considerations include getting more information about the project, identifying tasks to perform with milestones for each, deciding who will do what and how they will work together, and identifying resources they will need. For predesigned projects, this is often done through a simulation or virtual world, such as Bransford’s STAR LEGACY (Schwartz et al., 1999). Provides a virtual project environment. In many cases, the subfunction provides a virtual world or simulation game in which the project is conducted. In such cases, it provides natural consequences for student actions within the virtual environment. A virtual environment is “a computer-generated display that allows or compels the user (or users) to have a sense of being present in an environment other than the one they are actually in, and to interact with that environment” (Schroeder, 1996, p. 25). Many researchers have argued that virtual environment and simulation can be used to facilitate learning tasks that lead to increased understanding, motivation, engagement, collaboration, and knowledge transfer (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, & Tuzun, 2005; Chittaro & Ranon, 2007; Dickey, 2005; Mennecke, Hassall, & Triplett, 2008; Rieber, 1992). When appropriate, the projects subfunction also provides virtual coaching as students proceed, with a virtual coach appearing JIT to offer advice (but not instruction—that is described in the next section). Enhances real project environments. Real-world projects require students to solve authentic, hands-on, and interdisciplinary problems. In cases where a real-world environment is used for conducting the project, the subfunction can enhance that environment by introducing project elements related to the real environment, such as key knowledge, quality standards, planning, self-management, and other related resources. It can also provide tools for students to use while conducting the project, such as data collection, data analysis, communication, and collaboration tools. When appropriate, virtual coaching is also provided as students proceed. This helps connect their knowledge to the real world. Helps manage and monitor projects. The projects subfunction helps students organize and manage their project work, including identifying, assigning, and monitoring tasks; managing time and resources; and documenting progress daily. Students log time they devote to each project each day to help their advisory committees keep track of their progress. This subfunction can also be used to organize and manage any nonproject activities. The projects subfunction helps teachers, parents, and other supporters monitor the projects and activities, by flagging ones that require guidance, facilitation, and scaffolding. Artificial intelligence is used, to provide expert guidance automatically, under the watchful eye Reigeluth et al. 475 and additional insights of the teacher. The artificial intelligence can be deployed partly through pedagogical agent software. Hawryszkiewycz (2004) and Hawryszkiewycz and Lin (2003) detail the infrastructure for such agents to take on the role of teacher and expert and interact with learners by perceiving the progress of students in their learning activities and offering JIT assistance. The agents are also able to facilitate the learning process by helping students set up and manage their workspaces. Affords collaboration tools. Various collaboration tools (such as documentation and communication tools) and social apps are used by students as collaborative and resource-sharing platforms. Social software and other tools like Google Drive, Skype, Redbooth, and Dropbox are integrated into the system, offering students personal tools for production, presentation, reflection, and collaboration. Networks are created among students, teachers, and experts working within the field to maximize learning. For example, social software tools like Weblogs and wikis can make student work visible to other students, allow students to follow each other’s work, and give students access to each other’s networks of people and references. These networks also allow teachers to follow and potentially participate in the work of students. This can be supported through connections between students’ and teachers’ Weblogs using RSS feeds and social bookmarking (Richardson, 2005). Helps find, evaluate, and store resources. The projects subfunction helps students to find, evaluate, and store resources related to their project work and cultivate information literacy (American Library Association, 2000) to locate, evaluate, and use the needed information. It provides some guidance, demonstrations, and practice with feedback to develop good strategies for these activities. It teaches the concepts of personal knowledge management and how to retrieve, organize, and evaluate information from the web. One way this is done is to integrate open-source tools (such as social bookmarking tools, knowledge logs, and task managers) into the system as a mashup,3 with demonstrations on how these can be used for personal knowledge management (Weber, Thomas, & Ras, 2008). Helps resolve team conflicts. The projects subfunction helps students and teachers address conflict resolution issues because conflicts are inevitable in teamwork, not just in school but also in family life and work life. Students learn conflict resolution strategies, which include “constructive self-management (emotional, cognitive, and behavioral self-control), communication, social perspectivetaking, cooperative interpersonal problem solving, and promoting respect for individual and group differences” (Garrard & Lipsey, 2007, pp. 11–12). These strategies are learned as students who encounter problems may either use a decision tree or keyword entry within the PIES system, which then suggests particular strategies for dealing with the problem. This subfunction is available 476 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) to both students and teachers as a resource. When needed, students may contact their teachers for help so that teachers can direct students to specific strategies or offer personal suggestions for resolving conflicts. Scaffolding The scaffolding subfunction provides students with access to JIT personalized coaching and instruction anytime and anywhere as they work on their projects. According to Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, and Chin (2007), besides only offering direct instruction when students experience the need to learn something, scaffolding may also make parts of the task harder, to force students to engage with key disciplinary frameworks and strategies. These redirect students to examine counterclaims, articulate explanations, and reflect on progress. Coaching is provided JIT as needed, typically on student request, but occasionally on a predetermined schedule or suggestion by the student’s virtual pedagogical agent. For the instruction, PIES uses validated instructional theory to help students develop specific skills, understandings, facts, and dispositions through learning by doing, tutorials, mini-simulations, and so forth. Instruction is tailored to each learner’s learning style, kind of intelligence (Gardner, 1983), interests, preferences, knowledge, and background based on the student’s personal characteristics inventory. Students have great freedom to navigate through such instructional resources, including open educational resources (OERs), and are taught to use metacognition and self-direction. Provides JIT, attainment-based instruction. PIES’ scaffolding subfunction provides a JIT, personalized “instructional overlay” (such as simulations, tutorials, drill & practice, research tools, and student-expert academic communication tools) to support learning throughout each project. The emphasis of this subfunction is on learning by doing multiple, authentic, divergent performances (to promote transfer) for individual skills, understandings, and other kinds of attainments until mastery, with the help of tutorials and demonstrations when appropriate, similar to the Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/). This instructional support is sometimes provided automatically to a student when he or she reaches a certain point in the project, sometimes suggested by his or her virtual pedagogical agent or teacher when he or she reaches that point, and sometimes left to the student to request the support whenever he or she wants it. This instruction promotes efficiency of learning, student motivation, and transfer of learning to diverse contexts and develops automaticity of skills when appropriate (J. R. Anderson, 1996). Furthermore, PIES automatically collects data on student performance on each attainment and makes it available to the student and his or her advisory committee, to promote self-directed learning. Reigeluth et al. 477 Personalizes the instruction. Different than many learning management systems that focus on content management and administrative support, PIES provides personalized instruction that is tailored to each learner’s profile in terms of learning styles, multiple intelligences, goals, preferences, knowledge, and background. Using artificial intelligence techniques, such as intelligent tutoring systems, semantic webs, and adaptive systems, PIES infers, updates, and stores information about the learner from each instructional module to adapt the instructional format, content, resources, feedback, and exercises to the individual learner in subsequent instructional modules. This is a customized, localized alternative to “big data.” PIES allows the learner to navigate the instruction by providing learning-path options tailored to each learner. In addition, PIES’ instructional subfunctions make extensive use of aural, visual, and dynamic as well as verbal modes of instruction, thus accommodating a greater variety of learning styles and enhancing motivation. As supported by research, PIES can be seen to function as an intelligent learning management system (Yacef, 2002)—a personalized environment for learning with a greater focus on student learning styles, difficulties, and progress that allows the system to diagnose and remediate. PIES encourages personal knowledge management (Agnihotri & Troutt, 2009), with an emphasis on the learner’s effort to discover, share, learn, and explore through different combinations of skills and technology. The learner can customize the appearance on the learning environment, rearrange learning content, and include or exclude learning services. Sublearning spaces can also be created to enable different types of collaboration (Ong & Nsw, 2003). Helps students learn metacognitive skills. Researchers have found that metacognitive skills or cognitive self-regulation skills can be taught to students (Bandura, 1991; Zimmerman, 2002) and that there is a need to provide instructional strategies that inspire, motivate, and guide students to develop self-directed learning skills (Vovides, Sanchez-Alonso, Mitropoulou, & Nickmans, 2007), such as determination of learning goals, learning and management strategies, instructional resources, and external resources. PIES’ virtual pedagogical agent addresses this need by providing rich resources in its instructional support for students to learn metacognitive skills, such as how to learn, monitor, evaluate, and reflect and how to become self-directed learners. Direct support is also provided to nurture students’ curiosity, creativity, everyday living skills, social skills, collaboration skills, character development, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. Of course, such support is also provided by the student’s teachers and mentor. Gives access anywhere anytime. As a web-based educational system, PIES connects students and guides across geographic and cultural boundaries for a greatly enriched learning environment. It gives students (especially those who need 478 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) special assistance) access to the instructional space anywhere anytime, so that they can learn with their teachers, personal assistants, or parents at their own pace to attain individualized learning objectives. PIES is also available across, and compatible with, various portable and wearable devices (such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, Google Glass, and smartwatches), which facilitate anywhere anytime learning to its full potential. Integrates with OERs. PIES advocates that OERs be used whenever they can. OERs are “educational materials—textbooks, research articles, videos, assessments, simulations—that are either licensed under an open copyright license— for example, Creative Commons—or in the public domain” (Wiley, Green, & Soares, 2012, p. 2). OERs leverage on the Internet and can drastically decrease the cost of textbooks and other resources. By using OERs, PIES offers schools the option to free themselves from licensing costs and put their increasingly scarce resources to other important uses. PIES serves as a portal to various OERs, such as those of the Khan Academy, OER Commons (https://www.oercommons.org/), and Mountain Heights Academy (http://www.mountainheights academy.org/). OERs are easily integrated into PIES, similar to the way apps are integrated into a smartphone, except that the OERs are seamlessly interoperable with the other apps (other parts of PIES)—they are designed to share information with them—so the appropriate OER is called up automatically when the student encounters a learning need while working on a project, and the student’s performance results are automatically fed from the OER to the student’s personal attainments inventory. In essence, PIES’ instructional space is seamlessly connected with educational resources that are available free or for a fee, hence enhancing students’ learning options within a social constructive learning approach, while keeping the cost low for schools. Assessment for and of Student Learning PIES’ fourth major function is assessment for and of student learning. Its subfunctions are (a) assessing performance outcomes in the project and (b) assessing learning outcomes in the instructional modules. When a group successfully completes a project or an activity, it may not necessarily indicate that each member of the group has attained all the associated learning outcomes to the desired degree of proficiency. But it is important to determine the individual learning attainments, to have learning-based student progress. Therefore, the assessment function assesses both team performance on the project and individual student learning in the instructional modules. Also, PIES assesses not only academic outcomes but also nonacademic ones, such as metacognitive thinking skills; collaboration and communication skills; work ethic; and other kinds of emotional, social, and character development. In doing so, PIES enables assessment by nonteachers, including peers, community Reigeluth et al. 479 members, and parents. Student assessment data collected through the assessment function automatically feed into the recordkeeping function of PIES. Although we present instruction and assessment as two separate functions in PIES, they are seamlessly integrated and take place simultaneously. This is an important difference between the industrial-age and information-age paradigms. In the industrial-age paradigm, instruction and assessment take place separately. However, in the information-age paradigm, assessment is embedded in instruction. In a project, the outcomes of the project are evaluated to assess student or team performance. In the instructional modules, assessments take place within the practice exercises. A student continues with the exercises until the student meets established criteria of competency or attainment. When the student meets the criteria, he or she moves on to the next topic of instruction. The system also has identified attainments that benefit from periodic review and consequently provides periodic opportunities for each student to use those attainments in projects, as a form of review. Assessing Integrated Performance in the Project Space PIES’ assessment subfunction uses projects to present authentic tasks on which the student(s) can demonstrate integrated sets of knowledge, understanding, skills, and other attainments. Simulations or virtual worlds make it easier, less expensive, or safer to do this, but some real-world performances may also be needed or desired, such as learning to back up an 18-wheel truck or do a pirouette in ballet. After a student or team has performed an authentic task in the project, the assessment subfunction assists student or team reflection on the performance as a part of developing self-direction in learners. It helps students reflect on several aspects, such as the strategies they used in the project, strengths and weaknesses of student performances, and apparent misconceptions. Then, it offers feedback on the student reflections by providing formative evaluation of performances on the authentic task, when appropriate and when the performance is done in a simulation. For real-world performances, it provides criteria or a rubric for a teacher or other observer to use while observing the performance, preferably with a handheld device that uploads the evaluation results to PIES. At the end of the project, the assessment subfunction assists reflection on and summative evaluation of the final product or performance in any of several ways, using the specifications in the project contract: the assessment criteria, standards of performance, and methods of assessment. Some examples of methods of assessment include hosting a contest (i.e., competition); arranging a public display (i.e., invite students, teachers, parents, and community members to attend; a rating system may or may not be used by them); and being evaluated by a single expert or a panel of experts. 480 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) The assessment subfunction promotes and assesses nonacademic outcomes developed while performing projects, such as metacognitive thinking, collaboration skills, and work ethic, by using self-, peer-, and expert evaluations. For self-evaluation, the system assists student reflection during and after each project. During reflection, students self-assess their own performance by reflecting on several aspects, including the strategies they used during projects, the process through which they performed, the strengths and weaknesses of student performances, and their misconceptions. The system provides different kinds of templates for different projects to help students reflect on what they have learned and the process through which they performed. For peer evaluation, their group members offer feedback on various aspects of their performance on the group project, such as collaboration and communication skills. The system provides different templates and rubrics to aid the peer assessment. And for expert evaluation, experts are invited to provide feedback on the final outcome as well as the process of their performance. The system also provides customizable templates and rubrics for this assessment. Lastly, the final project, artifacts, evaluations, and reflections of students are stored in the system and linked to each student’s inventory of attainments. Therefore, students and teachers have easy access to them for future use (e.g., creating portfolios or planning future learning activities). Assessing Individual Learning in the Instructional Modules Students’ individual learning outcomes are assessed in the instructional modules. PIES provides functionalities, including assessing knowledge as it is being developed, adjusting difficulty to individual students, and assessing the same knowledge at different times in different ways. Each standard is broken down into individual attainments in the standards inventory, and each attainment is accompanied by criteria or a rubric for evaluating mastery. PIES’ instructional modules all require students to do things, both to promote learning by doing and to assess mastery of the attainment. When a student does not meet the criteria for a given performance, feedback (formative evaluation) is provided through hints or explanations or demonstrating the correct performance. The criteria for mastery include (a) criteria for a correct performance, (b) a criterion for number of unaided correct performances in a row, and sometimes (c) a criterion for speed of performance (or performing multiple tasks simultaneously, to ensure automatization of the skill). When the student has met all these criteria, then the summative evaluation is complete. In this manner, formative and summative assessment are embedded in the instruction—there is no test. The student has reached mastery, on which PIES updates the student’s personal attainments inventory, including links to summary data and products, as appropriate. Reigeluth et al. 481 When variability of a task is an issue (for near and far transfer), PIES presents the student with a representative variety of cases for the performances. The greater the variability, the larger the item pool, and the more performances the student needs to do correctly to reach mastery. Mere memorization is insufficient to perform well because the variety of cases is drawn from a large item pool. Students are required to do even more performances when automatization of a skill is important. Authentic contextual information is provided for each of the cases, when appropriate. When the student’s performance cannot be done in, and evaluated by, PIES, the system presents a rubric for a teacher or other observer to evaluate the student’s performance. Typically the evaluator uses a handheld device to access PIES and enter information directly into the rubric. When a set of related attainments (skills, understandings, memorizations, personal attributes, etc.) is mastered, a digital badge or a certificate is awarded for that set of attainments. This motivates students and provides more valuable information for potential employers and other interested individuals. For instance, when a student masters a set of collaborative skills (e.g., helping teammates, coordinating projects), he or she can be awarded a collaboration badge. Different badges can be awarded for different levels of attainment in collaboration. In summary, PIES serves four major functions to support student learning in the information-age paradigm of education: recordkeeping, planning, instruction, and assessment. These must be seamlessly and systemically integrated with each other. In brief, the recordkeeping function automatically provides necessary information to the planning function. The planning function identifies instruction functions (mainly projects) for the student to use. The assessment function is fully integrated with the instruction function. And the assessment function feeds information into the recordkeeping function. Secondary Functions For PIES to be most useful for the information-age paradigm of education, these four major functions to support student learning must be seamlessly and systemically integrated with at least three additional functions: (a) communication and collaboration, (b) PIES administration, and (c) improvement of PIES. These secondary functions support users in ways less directly related to the learning process. Communication and Collaboration The communication and collaboration function plays a key role to help students, teachers, staff, parents, community members, and other stakeholders work together effectively and efficiently. First, collaborative learning in a blended or 482 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) virtual learning environment requires users to plan and use effective channels of communication (Boettcher, Conrad, & League for Innovation in the Community College (U.S.), 1999). The function suggests communication tools, such as discussion forums during project collaboration and enables users to create the contact information and maintain their contacts for further communication needs. Emails, phone calls, videoconferencing, and social networking may be identified as preferred channels of communication. Second, with many cloud-based applications currently available (such as Google Drive and Evernote), cloud computing also contributes to effective communication and collaboration. A growing body of literature suggests that Web 2.0 technologies, which empower users by their generating and sharing content in open environments, are powerful tools for collaborative learning and communication (Augar, Raitman, & Zhou, 2004; Bonk & Zhang, 2008; Brown & Adler, 2008; Duffy & Bruns, 2006; Lamb, 2004; Lum, 2006; Williams & Jacobs, 2004). Some uses include wikis for collaborative writing, social bookmarking tools for collaborative tagging and annotation, and web content voting tools for gathering social feedback. Tools like these are used by PIES either as plug-in APIs4 or through links to external tools. In this way, students are better able to collaborate with their peers and to contact teachers and seek advice without the obstacles of time and space. Similarly, parents are able to check more effectively on their children’s learning progress and communicate with teachers, thus helping them be more involved in the learning process. PIES Administration The administration function involves the management of access, general student data, and personnel data. Other subfunctions could be added, such as budgeting, maintenance, and transportation, but separate computer systems are typically used for them. Access. PIES contains an enormous amount of information, including some that is sensitive and confidential. Thus, it is crucial to have the capability to restrict access. PIES offers access to information based on user role and information type; it offers access to functions based on role and function type; and it offers the authority to input and modify information based on role and information type. For example, some teachers are able to retrieve students’ general data, such as attendance records, while some school support personnel, such as a school nurse and a counselor, have access to students’ medical records. School nurses are authorized to input, retrieve, and access the medical data, whereas teachers are able to access, update, and modify students’ academic data but not their medical data. Considering the sensitivity of personal data, it is very important Reigeluth et al. 483 for PIES to implement strict security while still providing appropriate access to data (Reigeluth et al., 2008). General student data. Kinds of general student data include name, address, parent or guardian information, teachers, mentor, and school information, along with the student’s attendance and current location (homeroom, learning center, or community organization), as well as health information, community activities, and major life events. Because most students will not be restricted to set rooms at set times, PIES also keeps track of the physical location of every student at school through radio-frequency identification or by the student swiping an identity card when entering and leaving any school building (or even floor or wing). Personnel data. Kinds of school personnel data include not only general information, such as name, address, and degrees, but also data related specifically to learner-centered instruction, such as certifications, skills, and awards received, as well as professional development plans and records (Watson, Lee, & Reigeluth, 2007). These data also include a record of their assigned students and an archive of their contributions to students’ learning and service on school committees. In essence, PIES not only keeps track of the school personnel’s personal information but also records their instructional efforts and accomplishments over time. Some examples of these data are the instructional or assessment tools authored, evaluations performed on them, awards their students have received, and other indicators of teaching excellence (e.g., exemplary student performances). Effective management of these data by PIES will help maximize school operations. Improvement of PIES Finally, PIES is capable of making or suggesting improvements of itself. To better meet the learners’ and all users’ needs, it is indispensable to improve PIES on a continuing basis. To accomplish this, PIES evaluates and improves all its functions (major and secondary functions) and helps add additional functions or subfunctions as users need them. The system improves through the following methods: (a) it helps users to evaluate its current functions with ratings and suggestions for improvement similar to those found on Amazon.com, to share their experiences using the resources and help other users to select resources that best meet their specific needs; (b) it self-evaluates the quality or effectiveness of its functions (e.g., the effectiveness of a tutorial based on the analysis of student data) and uses artificial intelligence to suggest improvements or at least alert the teachers, system managers, or app developers to make improvements; and (c) it helps users to request new functions. 484 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) Moreover, PIES allows users to improve or customize their individual learning portals, including the user interface, dashboard, and homepage, so that PIES better meets their individual needs, including their different ways of navigating the system. The following are details about functions for improving the instruction and assessment functions. Improving instruction. This subfunction supports the development of new instruction (projects and scaffolding) and the evaluation and revision of existing instruction. For instructional development, it helps teachers, other instructional developers, and anyone else to create new projects and instructional modules, which are much like different apps for a smartphone; only they must meet standards for interoperating with other parts of PIES. Authoring tools similar to Merrill’s ID Expert (Merrill & ID2 Research Group, 1998) are the major element in this subfunction, but there is also a tool for conducting formative evaluations of the new projects and instructional modules. This subfunction helps developers identify every project with tags for the individual attainments that it encompasses, and every instructional module with tags for the individual attainment that it addresses, so as to enable linking of modules to projects. PIES’ instructional evaluation and revision subfunction helps teachers, students, and parents improve existing projects and instructional modules by collecting data and helping qualified individuals use those data to make improvements to existing projects and modules. It automatically collects and aggregates data (without names) for all students who work on each project and each instructional module, to identify weaknesses in them. Furthermore, students are encouraged to do a quick evaluation of each project and module, which includes Amazon-type project ratings and comments, especially suggestions for improvements. Finally, users can also attach special annotations or notes to each project and module, to identify the learning contexts or pedagogical situations for which it is suitable. These data help the original developers to improve their projects and modules, as described next, but they also help teachers, other instructional developers, and even authorized community members to improve existing projects and modules that are open to adaptation. PIES displays the data on each project or module in a format most useful for making improvements, and it uses artificial intelligence with an instructional design theory database to recommend improvements, based on the data and user recommendations. Furthermore, it provides authoring tools to facilitate making the improvements. The subfunction allows for version control, giving the user access to all versions of the projects or modules based on conditions that are specified in the form of tags that help users to know when it may be better to use one version compared with the others. Reigeluth et al. 485 Improving assessments. This subfunction helps teachers and others develop and improve all kinds of assessments for formative and summative evaluations of student performance and learning. This subfunction is integrated into the instructional improvement subfunction because instruction and assessment are developed at the same time and are inseparable. The system helps to develop criteria for mastery and rubrics, and it adds metadata to link them to the related attainment. The subfunction also enables users to link to existing instruction and assessment modules on other systems or websites and to develop accompanying elements that enhance the usefulness of those modules. The subfunction ensures development of a sufficiently large and diverse bank of items or trials, along with metadata about the divergence and difficulty of the items. A teacher may improve or develop additional assessment items for local use by reviewing the metadata and adjusting the difficulty levels and diversity of the items. These assessments are then integrated into the instructional module or linked to the project. Then, there is a process whereby these revisions can be incorporated into the module or project by the developer, for use beyond the local area. System Architecture PIES is designed as a cloud-based computing system where data are accessed by the users (students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community members) through web browsers. As the schematic diagram for PIES illustrates (see Figure 1), the PIES cloud is to be housed within PIES servers. This might be supported by the U.S. Department of Education or by private foundations. Each of the major functions of PIES (recordkeeping, planning, instruction, and assessment) and the secondary functions (communication and collaboration, administration, and improvement of PIES) are to be housed in individual modules within the PIES cloud. The major and secondary functions are connected to five major databases in the PIES cloud: 1. The Standards Inventory Database, which includes federal, state, and local standards 2. Student Profiles Database, which includes personal attainments, personal characteristics, and project contracts 3. The Teammate Selection Database, which shows other students interested in the same projects at the beginning of each project period 4. The Projects Database, which contains fully developed projects, as well as ideas for projects to be developed by students 5. The Instructional Modules Database, which contains all the instructional modules, including mastery assessments in the form of practice. 486 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) In the Student Profiles Database, the personal attainments inventory belongs to the student, not the “school”, and can be accessed by the student at any time throughout his or her life, to promote lifelong learning and sharing of accomplishments. In addition, the PIES cloud is interoperable and seamlessly integrated with external servers that house OERs, external web-based apps, and other open educational databases. Features of the PIES cloud include interoperability, modularity, and customizability. Interoperability “Interoperability is defined as the ability of two or more systems or elements to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged” (Yahia, Aubry, & Panetto, 2012, p. 444). Research in the field (Carusi & Reimer, 2010; Doove, Pronk, & van der Kuil, 2010) highlights the importance of building systems that are interoperable and easily integratable, as they offer features and functions that “. . . enjoy widespread use [and] have been extensively tested by the user community and are thus less likely to suffer from bugs and usability issues” (Jeffery & Wustemann, 2012, p. 137). As envisioned, PIES is a platform somewhat like the Apple iOS and Android operating system (except it is in the cloud) for which anyone can create apps, as long as they meet certain standards. Unlike most iOS and Android apps, PIES apps must meet certain standards for interoperability. These include metadata conventions for linking projects to attainments, instructional modules to projects, and student data to projects and instructional modules so that the project or module can access information from the appropriate personal characteristics inventory and post summative assessment data to the appropriate personal attainments inventory. Metadata are also included for evaluating and improving the apps. Most of these apps are OERs, meaning they are free, but some are also offered for a fee, as with iOS and Android apps. It has been shown that teachers and students alike benefit when they have open, uninterrupted access to educational materials that they can use and modify to conform to their needs (Aslan & Reigeluth, 2011; Davis et al., 2010; Dutta, 2013). Some OERs don’t need to share any information with PIES, such as videos on YouTube, in which case they are typically just accessed by a PIES app through a link. Modularity In the field of software development, modularity is a key design rule that can help group a large number of components within a complex system into a “smaller number of subsystems so as to reduce the interdependency between each component” (Peng, Geng, & Lin, 2012, p. 4506). A modular design rule can not only be applied at the software development stage but also be useful when designing 487 Reigeluth et al. Table 2. A Summary of PIES’ Design Features. Major functions 1. Recordkeeping for student learning 2. Planning for student learning 3. Instruction for student learning 4. Assessment for and of student learning Secondary functions Architectural features 1.1 Standards inventory 1.2 Personal attainments inventory 1.3 Personal characteristics inventory 2.1 Career and long-term learning goals 2.2 Current prospective attainments 2.3 Short-term learning goals 2.4 Projects and other activities 2.5 Teams 2.6 Supporting roles 2.7 Learning contracts 3.1 Projects: introduces, provides virtual environment, enhances real project environments, helps manage and monitor projects, affords collaboration tools, helps find, evaluate, and store resources, and helps resolve team conflicts 3.2 Scaffolding: provides JIT attainmentbased instruction, personalizes the instruction, helps students learn metacognitive skills, gives access anywhere anytime, and integrates with OERs 4.1 Assessing integrated performances in the project space 4.2 Assessing individual learning in the instructional modules 1. Communications and collaboration 2. PIES administration: general student data, personnel data 3. Improvement of PIES: improving instruction, improving assessments Databases Other features 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 1. 2. 3. Standards Inventory Database Student Profiles Database Teammate Selection Database Projects Database Instructional Modules Database Interoperability Modularity Customizability Note. PIES ¼ Personalized Integrated Educational System; OER ¼ open educational resource; JIT ¼ just-intime. 488 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) the user interaction or user experience. User interaction or user experience becomes relevant when designing interfaces for web-based applications through which the modules in PIES are accessed and used by the students. By using the modular design rule, developers of the system are able to concurrently build separate sections of the system, thus saving time and money (Gershenson, Prasad, & Zhang, 2003; Langlois, 2002; Peng et al., 2012). Because individual features of the system are built on separate modules, PIES is a much lighter and more agile system that can be easily accessed and used through simple web browsers. From the administrative point of view, modularity ensures an easier debugging and quality assurance process for PIES (Gershenson et al., 2003; Langlois, 2002; Peng et al., 2012). Customizability Customizability is defined as “the attributes of a portlet5 that enable it to be customized by the user, to reduce the effort required to use it and also to increase satisfaction with the portlet” (Jeong & Hong, 2012, p. 574). The web-based interface to access the functions and features of PIES is customizable. Users have the ability, by selecting and deselecting PIES functions in their portal, to display only functions and features that they wish to use, and by embedding external modules (apps). Conclusion In summary, PIES is a set of design specifications for a technology system to support the learner-centered paradigm of education. It has four major functions, three secondary functions, and three architectural design features, as shown in Table 2. Fifty years of piecemeal educational reforms have left our public education systems increasingly inadequate to meet the educational needs of a postindustrial society, but there are over 140 school systems (mostly charter schools) that have transitioned to the learner-centered paradigm (Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013). The largest positive effect on increasing the current rate of paradigm change would likely be the development of technological tools appropriate for the learnercentered paradigm. Without such tools, it is difficult for teachers to truly personalize learning and base student progress on learning rather than on time. This article has presented a design of a system that could provide such tools, PIES. It is our hope that this article will inspire researchers to advance these design specifications and develop such a system. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Reigeluth et al. 489 Funding The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Notes 1. A mentor teacher is the student’s primary teacher or advisor—someone who gets to know the student well over a period of several years. 2. Each student has only one “mentor teacher,” who typically serves that role for 3 or more years. However, other people may also be mentors for a single project, including other teachers, community experts, other experts, parents, and guardians. According to Mcpartland and Nettles (1991), “[m]entoring is commonly defined as a one-to-one relationship between a caring adult and a student who needs support to achieve academic, career, social, or personal goals” (p. 568). 3. Mashup is defined by Wikipedia as “a web page, or web application, that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface.” 4. According to Wikipedia, an API (application programming interface) “is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications.” 5. A portlet is a web-based component that processes requests and generates dynamic content. The end-user essentially sees a portlet as a separate content area that occupies a small window within a web page. References Agnihotri, R., & Troutt, M. D. (2009). The effective use of technology in personal knowledge management: A framework of skills, tools and user context. Online Information Review, 33(2), 329–342. American Library Association. (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Chicago, IL: The Association of College and Research Libraries, A division of the American Library Association Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/standards/standards.pdf An, Y. J., & Reigeluth, C. M. (2011). Creating technology-enhanced, learner centered classrooms: K-12 teacher beliefs, perceptions, barriers, and support needs. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 28(2), 54–62. Anderson, J. R. (1996). The architecture of cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Anderson, N. J. (2002). The role of metacognition in second language teaching and learning. ERIC Digest, April, 3–4. Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/resources/ digest/0110anderson.html Aslan, S. (2012). Investigating “the coolest school in America”: A study of a learnercentered school and educational technology in the information age (PhD doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib. indiana.edu/login?url¼http://search.proquest.com/docview/1316886672?accountid¼ 11620 (Order No. 3550777). Aslan, S., Huh, Y., Lee, D., & Reigeluth, C. M. (2011). The role of personalized integrated educational systems in the information-age paradigm of education. Contemporary Educational Technology, 2(2), 95–117. 490 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) Aslan, S., & Reigeluth, C. M. (2011). A trip to the past and future of educational computing: Understanding its evolution. Contemporary Educational Technology, 2(1), 1–17. Augar, N., Raitman, R., & Zhou, W. (2004, December 5–8). Teaching and learning online with wikis. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer, & R. Phillips (Eds.), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE conference (pp. 95–104). Perth, Western Australia. Retrieved from http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30005482/ zhou-teachingandlearning-2004.pdf Banathy, B. H. (1991). Systems design of education: A journey to create the future. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of self-regulation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 248–287. Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., & Tuzun, H. (2005). Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game without guns. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(1), 86–107. Billig, S. H. (2000). Research on K-12 school based service-learning: The evidence builds. Phi Delta Kappan, 81, 658–664. Boettcher, J. V., Conrad, R. M., & League for Innovation in the Community College (U.S.). (1999). Faculty guide for moving teaching and learning to the web. Mission Viejo, CA: League for Innovation in the Community College. Bonk, C. J., & Zhang, K. (2008). Empowering online learning: 100+ activities for reading, reflecting, displaying, and doing. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Branson, R. K. (1987). Why the schools can’t improve: The upper limit hypothesis. Journal of Instructional Development, 10(4), 15–26. Brown, J. S., & Adler, R. P. (2008). Minds on fire: Open education, the long tail, and learning 2.0. EDUCAUSE Review, 43(1), 16–32. Retrieved from http://www.educause. edu/ero/article/minds-fire-open-education-long-tail-and-learning-20 Bruner, J. (1985). Vygotsky: An historical and conceptual perspective. In J. V. Wetsch (Ed.), Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 21–34). London, England: Cambridge University Press. Bunderson, C. V., Wiley, D. A., & McBride, R. (2009). Domain theory for instruction: Mapping attainments to enable learner-centered education. In C. M. Reigeluth & A. A. Carr-Chellman (Eds.), Instructional-design theories and models: Building a common knowledge base (Vol. III, pp. 327–347). New York, NY: Routledge. Bush, M. D., & Mott, J. D. (2009). The transformation of learning with technology. Educational Technology, 49(2), 3–20. Caine, R. N., & Caine, G. (1997). Education on the edge of possibility. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Carusi, A., & Reimer, T. (2010). VRE collaborative landscape study. Bristol, England: JISC. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi¼10.1.1.404. 6517&rep¼rep1&type¼pdf Reigeluth et al. 491 Chittaro, L., & Ranon, R. (2007). Web3D technologies in learning, education and training: Motivations, issues, opportunities. Computers & Education, 49(1), 3–18. Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2008). Disrupting class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Covington, M. V. (1996). The myth of intensification. Educational Researcher, 25(8), 24–27. Darling-Hammond, L. (1990). Achieving our goals: Superficial or structural reforms. Phi Delta Kappan, 72(4), 286–295. Darling-Hammond, L. (2002). Redesigning schools: What matters and what works 10 features of good small schools. Stanford, CA: School Redesign Network at Stanford University. Davis, H. C., Carr, L., Hey, J., Howard, Y., Millard, D., Morris, D., . . . White, S. (2010). Learning technologies. IEEE Transactions, 3(2), 96–109. Dickey, M. D. (2005). Three-dimensional virtual worlds and distance learning: Two case studies of Active Worlds as a medium for distance education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(3), 439–461. Doove, J., Pronk, G., & van der Kuil, A. (2010). Collaboratories: Connecting researchers, SURFfoundation. Retrieved from http://www.surffoundation.nl/SiteCollectionDocu ments/Collaboratories%20Connecting%20Researchers.pdf Duffy, P. D., & Bruns, A. (2006, September 26). The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities. Paper presented at the Online Learning and Teaching Conference, Brisbane. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5398/ Dutta, P. (2013). Personalized Integrated Educational Systems (PIES) for the learnercentered information-age paradigm of education: A study to improve the design of the functions and features of PIES (PhD thesis). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Education Commission of the States. (1996). Bending without breaking: Improving education through flexibility & choice (p. 39). Denver, CO: Author. Fullan, M. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depth of educational reform. London, England; New York, NY: Falmer Press. Fullan, M. (1999). Change forces: The sequel. London, England; Philadelphia, PA: Falmer Press. Fullan, M. (2003). Change forces with a vengeance. New York, NY: Routledge. Gardner, H. E. (1983). Frames of mind. New York, NY: Basic Books. Garrard, W. M., & Lipsey, M. W. (2007). Conflict resolution education and antisocial behavior in U.S. schools: A meta-analysis. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 25(1), 9–38. Garrett, N., Thoms, B., Alrushiedat, N., & Ryan, T. (2009). Social ePortfolios as the new course management system. On the Horizon, 17(3), 197–207. Gershenson, J. K., Prasad, G. J., & Zhang, Y. (2003). Product modularity: Definitions and benefits. Journal of Engineering Design, 14(3), 295–313. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Hawryszkiewycz, I. T. (2004, December 5–8). Towards active learning management systems. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer, & R. Phillips (Eds.), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE conference (pp. 348–356). Perth, 492 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) Western Australia. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/ procs/hawryszkiewycz.html Hawryszkiewycz, I. T., & Lin, A. (2003, November). Process knowledge support for emergent processes. In Proceedings of the second IASTED international conference on information and knowledge management (pp. 83–87), Scottsdale, AZ: ACTA Press. Hmelo-Silver, C., Duncan, R., & Chinn, C. (2007). Scaffolding and achievement in problem-based and inquiry learning: A response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 99–107. International Society for Technology in Education. (2007). NETS for students. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007 Jeffery, D., & Wusteman, J. (2012). OJAX++: Demonstrating the next generation of virtual research environments. The Electronic Library, 30(1), 134–145. Jeong, H.-J., & Hong, S.-J. (2012). The survey of quality model for software and system. In J. J. Park, et al (Eds), Computer science and convergence (pp. 569–574). New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media. Lamb, B. (2004). Wide open spaces: Wikis, ready or not. EDUCAUSE Review, 39(5), 36–48. Langlois, R. N. (2002). Modularity in technology and organization. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 49, 19–37. Lewis, C., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1999). Recapturing education’s full mission: Educating for social, ethical, and intellectual development. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Vol. II, pp. 511–536). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Lieberman, A. (Ed.). (1995). The work of restructuring schools: Building from the ground up. New York, NY: Columbia University Teachers College Press. Lum, L. (2006). The power of podcasting. Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 23(2), 32. McCombs, B. L. (2008). From one-size-fits-all to personalized learner-centered learning: The evidence. The FM Duffy Reports, 13(2), 1–12. McCombs, B. L. (2013). The learner-centered model: From the vision to the future. In J. H. D. Cornelius-White, R. Motschnig-Pitrik & M. Lux (Eds.), Interdisciplinary handbook of the person centered approach: Connections beyond psychotherapy (pp. 83–113). New York, NY: Springer. McCombs, B. L., & Vakili, D. (2005). A learner-centered framework for e-learning. The Teachers College Record, 107(8), 1582–1600. McCombs, B. L., & Whisler, J. S. (1997). The learner-centered classroom and school: Strategies for increasing student motivation and achievement. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Mcpartland, J. M., & Nettles, S. M. (1991). Using community adults as advocates or mentors for at-risk middle school students: A two-year evaluation of project RAISE. American Journal of Education, 99(4), 568–586. Mennecke, B., Hassall, L. M., & Triplett, J. (2008). The mean business of Second Life: Teaching entrepreneurship, technology and e-commerce in immersive environments. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 4(3), 339–348. Merrill, M. D., & ID2 Research Group. (1998). ID Expert: A second generation instructional development system. Instructional Science, 26(3–4), 242–262. Reigeluth et al. 493 Motschnig-Pitrik, R., Derntl, M., & Mangler, J. (2003). Web-support for learning contracts: Concept and experiences. Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Multimedia and Information & Communication Technologies in Education (m-ICTE’03), Badajoz, Spain. National Commission of Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. National Education Commission on Time and Learning. (1994). Prisoners of time: What we know and what we need to know. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education. Office of Technology Assessment. (1995). Education and technology: Future visions. Washington, DC: U.S. Congress. Ong, S. S., & Nsw, S. (2003). Towards personalised and collaborative learning management systems. Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Athens, Greece. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). Learning for the 21st century. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21_Report.pdf Peng, G., Geng, X., & Lin, L. (2012). Modularity and inequality of code contribution in open source software development. Proceedings of the Forty-Fifth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Wailea, HI. Perkins, D. N. (1992). Smart schools: Better thinking and learning for every child. New York, NY: The Free Press. Prensky, M. (2014). The world needs a new curriculum. Educational Technology, 54(4), 3–15. Reigeluth, C. M., & Garfinkle, R. J. (1994). Systemic change in education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Reigeluth, C. M., & Karnopp, J. R. (2013). Reinventing schools: It’s time to break the mold. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Reigeluth, C. M., Watson, S. L., Watson, W. R., Dutta, P., Chen, Z., & Powell, N. (2008). Roles for technology in the information-age paradigm of education: Learning management systems. Educational Technology, 48(6), 32–39. Richardson, W. (2005). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Rieber, L. P. (1992). Computer-based microworlds: A bridge between constructivism and direct instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 40(1), 93–106. Sarason, S. B. (1990). The predictable failure of educational reform: Can we change course before it’s too late? (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schlechty, P. C. (2001). Shaking up the schoolhouse. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schlechty, P. C. (2005). Creating great schools: Six critical systems at the heart of educational innovation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schroeder, R. (1996). Possible worlds: The social dynamic of virtual reality technologies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Schutz, P. A., & Lanehart, S. L. (1994). Long-term educational goals, subgoals, learning strategies use and the academic performance of college students. Learning and Individual Differences, 6(4), 399–412. Schwartz, D. L., Lin, X., Brophy, S., & Bransford, J. D. (1999). Toward the development of flexibly adaptive instructional designs. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructionaldesign theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Vol. II, pp. 183–213). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 494 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) Senge, P. M. (2000). Schools that learn: A fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who cares about education (1st ed.). New York, NY: Doubleday. Sizer, T. R. (1985). Horace’s compromise: The dilemma of the American high school. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Toffler, A. (1990). Powershift. New York, NY: Bantam. United States Department of Education. (2010). Transforming American education: Learning powered by technology. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Technology. U.S. Department of Labor. (1991). What work requires of schools: A SCANS report for America 2000. Washington, DC: Author. Vovides, Y., Sanchez-Alonso, S., Mitropoulou, V., & Nickmans, G. (2007). The use of e-learning course management systems to support learning strategies and to improve self-regulated learning. Educational Research Review, 2, 64–74. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wagner, T. (1994). How schools change: Lessons learned from three communities revisited. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer. Wagner, T. (2002). Making the grade: Reinventing America’s schools. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer. Watson, W. R., Lee, S. K., & Reigeluth, C. M. (2007). Learning management systems: An overview and roadmap of the systemic application of computers to education. In F. M. Neto & F. V. Brasileiro (Eds.), Advances in computer-supported learning (pp. 66–96). Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing. Watson, W. R., Watson, S. L., & Reigeluth, C. M. (2013). Education 3.0: Breaking the mold with technology. Interactive Learning Environments. doi:10.1080/ 10494820.2013.764322 Weber, S., Thomas, L., & Ras, E. (2008). A software organization platform (SOP). The 10th Workshop on Learning Software Organizations, Rome, Italy. Retrieved from http://ove-armbrust.de/downloads/Armbrust_SOP.pdf Wiley, D., Green, C., & Soares, L. (2012, February 7). Dramatically bringing down the cost of education with OER: How open education resources unlock the door to free learning. Center for American Progress. Retrieved from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2012/02/07/11167/dramatically-bringing-down-the-cost-ofeducation-with-oer/ Williams, J. B., & Jacobs, J. (2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(2), 232–247. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/williams.html Wolf, M. A. (2010). Innovate to educate: System [re]design for personalized learning; a report from the 2010 symposium. Washington, DC: Software and Information Industry Association Retrieved from http://siia.net/pli/presentations/PerLearnPaper.pdf Yacef, K. (2002). Intelligent teaching assistant systems. In R. Werner (Ed.), Proceedings of the international conference on computers in education (pp. 136–140). Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp¼&arnumber¼1185849 Yahia, E., Aubry, A., & Panetto, H. (2012). Formal measures for semantic interoperability assessment in cooperative enterprise information systems. Computers in Industry, 63(5), 443–457. Reigeluth et al. 495 Yildirim, Z., Reigeluth, C. M., Kwon, S., Kageto, Y., & Shao, Z. (2013). A comparison of learning management systems in a school district: Searching for the ideal personalized integrated educational system (PIES). Interactive Learning Environments. doi:10.1080/ 10494820.2012.745423 Yonezawa, S., McClure, L., & Jones, M. (2012, April). Personalization in schools students at the center series. Quincy, MA: Nellie Mae Education Foundation. Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41, 64–70. Author Biographies Charles M. Reigeluth is an educational researcher who focuses on paradigm change in education. He has a BA in economics from Harvard University and a PhD in instructional psychology from Brigham Young University. He is a professor emeritus at the Instructional Systems Technology Department at Indiana University and is a former chairman of the department. His recent book, Reinventing Schools, (www.reigeluth.net), advocates and chronicles national paradigm change in K-12 education. He offers presentations and consulting on this topic. Sinem Aslan is a principal investigator at Intel Corporation with research interests that include personalized and project-based learning. Zengguan Chen is currently an instructional designer at Seattle Central College, where she assists faculty with hybrid or online course design and development. Pratima Dutta is the director of distance learning at California State University, Northridge, and her research is focused on areas of personalized, competencybased education systems and online learning. Yeol Huh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Instructional Systems Technology. His research interests are to promote learners’ self-regulated learning and motivation in technology-enhanced learning environments and to facilitate technology integration for learner-centered instruction. Ya-Huei Lu is a PhD candidate in instructional systems technology at Indiana University Bloomington, and her research interests focus on teachers’ technology integration in early childhood education. Mina Min is a PhD candidate in curriculum studies, with a special emphasis in technology-integrated curriculum, teacher education, and elementary education, 496 Journal of Educational Computing Research 53(3) in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Indiana University Bloomington. Verily Tan is a doctoral student in instructional systems technology and the learning sciences at Indiana University, and her research interests are in design thinking, specifically in electronic-textiles and maker spaces. Dabae Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Sam Houston State University, and her research interests include personalized learning (PL), technology use to support PL, human performance technology, and research methods. Chun-Yi Lin is an assistant professor at Tamkang University with a research interest in instructional design, particularly on how emerging technologies support personalized and collaborative learning, in light of the learner-centered paradigm of education. Sunnie Lee Watson is an assistant professor of learning design and technology at Purdue University with a research focus on attitude change instruction, information-age educational technology such as MOOCs and PIES, and critical systems theory for qualitative educational research and school change. William R. Watson is an associate professor of learning design and technology at Purdue University, and his research focuses on the critical, systemic change of education to realize a learner-centered paradigm, including the application of technology such as video games, virtual environments, and learning management software to create customized and personalized learning environments.