Title: Towards personal portals for professional development

Authors: Sjoerd De Vries, Italo De Diana

Addresses: Communication Studies, Faculty Behavioral Science, Institutenweg, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, NL–7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands. ' Educational Management, Design, and Development, Faculty Behavioral Science, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, NL–7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

Abstract: In general, online learning platforms are institution-based and mainly meant for the management of course-based education. From the perspective of a lifelong learner, these platforms are only temporarily useful for specific courses and have no significance for their further professional development. We are interested in the realisation of personal portals for lifelong learning. These professionalisation portals are personalised and give access to a wide range of local and networked personal study and professionalisation services, formal as well as informal, from a variety of institutions. Here we focus on the concept of a personal professionalisation portal as a Rich Internet Application. The question is: what is this portal and what factors contribute to the effectiveness of these portals? At the end, we discuss future trends in the development and application of these portals and related research issues.

Keywords: personal portals; rich internet applications; effective professional development; online learning; e-learning; lifelong learning; continuing professional development; CPD.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2006.009203

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2006 Vol.16 No.3/4, pp.271 - 279

Published online: 09 Mar 2006 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article