Introducing Technologies and Practices for Supporting Self-organized Learning in a Hybrid Environment Priya Sharma (The Pennsylvania State University, USA psharma@psu.edu) Sebastian Fiedler (University of Augsburg, Germany sebastian.fiedler@cognitivearchitects.de) Abstract: Higher education is supposed to prepare its graduates to enter the workplace and apply and adapt their knowledge to the specific requirements of the setting. However, by adhering to traditional instructional models and to a view of learning that is very different from that required within the workplace, higher education fails to adequately prepare students to deal with rapid changes and emergent demands that require individuals to learn and adapt in situ and on the job. The advent of hybrid learning has allowed one mechanism for changing existing practices. Although hybrid environments can offer additional support for traditional instructional and learning methods, we think its potential lies in supporting new forms of learning and facilitation—specifically those related to self-organized learning and critical reflection—by using new types of technologies and tools. We would like to address the use of a specific kind of technology—personal Webpublishing systems (PWS)—to support this type of learning. In this paper, we present the reasoning behind the use of such technologies and describe the organization of a learning environment and identify the roles and structure of the face-to-face component and the online toolkits for supporting self-organized learning. We will also describe the new roles that facilitators and learners must adopt within these hybrid environments. Keywords: personal Webpublishing, hybrid learning environments, self-organization in learning, weblogs, higher education Categories: H.4.3, H.5.4, J.4, K.3 1 Introduction Higher education is supposed to prepare its graduates to enter the workplace and apply and adapt their knowledge to the specific contextual requirements. The gap between student experiences in academic and workplace settings is, however, increasing steadily. While most of higher education still ascribes to traditional models of instruction and learning, the workplace is characterized by rapid changes and emergent demands that require individuals to learn and adapt in situ without the guidance of educational authorities. Higher education fails to adequately prepare its graduates to meet the challenges of the workplace for two primary reasons: first, traditional authoritative instructional Proceedings of I-KNOW ’04 Graz, Austria, June 30 - July 2, 2004