PLE is a concept born out of the perceived limitations of the Virtual Learning Environment to meet the needs of individual students, who are networked in their own right and using a wide range of personal services and tools. With the general aim of developing tools that manage learning from the learner perspective, there is also a complementary organisational focus which sees the PLE as an opportunity to gain the benefits of e-learning without the substantial capital cost and management overhead of a centralised platform. There is still a need for coordination to support course groups and work teams but with an emphasis on integrating personal tools.

The CETIS Personal Learning Environments project and blog (below) produced resources of interest to developers. See also the team's article on Personal Learning Environments