"A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a set of people and digital resources an individual can access for the specific intent of learning. Students illustrate these potential connections through the creation of visible network of the set. Nodes represent the resources, and ties suggest the relationship between the sources. A PLE then is a visual representation of a learner’s informal learning processes and a concrete demonstration of an individual’s capacity for future learning."

"This LAT helps students identify information sources, whether tools or individuals, that may help their professional development and growth in the future. Students may use their PLEs to learn from content area specialists, to learn about new technology, to find interesting news, and so forth. A PLE provides students with a way to map their future connections and to let them understand that their environments can and should grow. A PLE also supports multiple pathways to learning, by illustrating learning in emerging learning contexts, specifically social media spaces.Being intentional about the process of information gathering and curation can help learners to recognize and realize the process of lifelong and social learning. It can help them to understand that no matter where they are, there is always some source available from which they may seek the answers to questions or even to come up with new questions, which they document in an ever-expandable network. It can be an empowering and transformational experience through prompting students to create a lifelong learning infrastructure." — Learning Assessment Techniques, Barkley, EF and Major, CH, 2016.