Van Harmelen, M. (2006). Personal learning environments. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’06)

Abstract:
Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are attracting increasing interest in the e-learning domain. PLEs may be characterised in a multidimensional space. Examples of PLEs are discussed.

this is a very short paper, outlining some examples of PLEs.

There is increasing awareness of a major limitation in many VLEs, namely teacher or institutional control of resources. Control of PLEs may vested in their individual users.