The CAPPLE project we are presenting in this proposal, attempts to describe and analyse the prospects for the personal learning environments (PLEs) of future Spanish professionals. It includes the analysis of this in technical and functional terms. The project is looking for Spanish professionals with potentially an immediate incorporation into the labour market of every area of knowledge, in other words, senior students in Spanish universities.

In overall terms, we consider that the concept of PLEs gives everybody a background to reflect on the value systematic organization and promotion of the building of their own environment to learn. It is an environment that will grow and continuously change throughout your life. The basic idea is quite simple. If, as teachers, we teach our students how to habitually learn on the Internet (continuously building, managing and improving their PLE), they will continue developing themselves professionally and personally, in their jobs, workplaces and even at home.

Consequently, we understand that formal learning –and universities in this case- must offer to students opportunities to adapt the “official” learning environment implemented in institutions to their own training needs. In parallel, institutions have to provide to students with the necessary skills for managing and enriching their own personalized environment to learn.

Therefore, with the description and analysis of the current PLEs of future professionals, we want to know what these environments are like. In addition, we want to understand what these environment features are, as well as the kind of strategies students have been using to organize them. We also want to know if some of these strategies come from formal learning, and if not, what kind of lack of transversal learning made them evident.

All this information allow us to better understand the processes of creation, management and enrichment process related to PLEs, as well as to better knowing the strategies to improve these processes in formal education. Not in vain, do we understand PLEs are key elements of citizen’s learning development, as well as a crucial part of a citizen’s digital identity and life long learning competence.

The Project we are presenting here, is an ambitious, complex and multidisciplinary project. This project could can have a direct impact on the fundamental research on PLEs (modelling, analytical tools, naturalistic evidence of their existence, and so on), as well as on institutional strategies surrounding them, both for initial professional learning and also basic education.