These days, new knowledge develops and becomes useless in a very short term. In the digital era where new knowledge is rapidly generated, modified and decimated, it is impossible for individuals to acquire all the knowledge. This makes it more important to connect with information and people in network and to identify appropriate connections when needed.Connectivism, which was suggested as a new learning theory in the digital age, considers knowledge as a connection between information nodes distributed in the network. According to connectivism, people can learn by recognizing and interpreting useful patterns between the nodes.While connectivist learning happens in an informal way in our daily lives, few studies have explored the design principles that support connectivist learning. For successful connectivist learning, a proper balance between the autonomy given to learners and the structured support provided by a facilitator is necessary. For example, the facilitator can provide adequate interventions to help learners make great connections, rather than deliver learning materials as an expert.In this study, the design principles of personal learning environment for connectivism were developed. Specific research issues are as follows. First, what are the design principles of personal learning environment for connectivism? Second, what is the intrinsic relevance of the design principles? Third, what is the reaction of learners and an instructor to the principles?The design principles were developed in accordance with the procedure of the development study methodology. First of all, preliminary design principles were developed based on the results of the review of the earlier studies and the analysis of three representative cMOOCs. After then, the initial design principles were evaluated by experts to ensure the internal validity of them. Afterwards, the revised design principles were applied to a class to ensure the external validity of them. Lastly, the final design principles were developed reflecting the students’ and the instructor’s responses to the class.When the design principles were applied to the class, the learners were able to share their knowledge and opinions through the network with experts and other learners inside and outside of the classroom. In addition, they supplemented their limited knowledge with the feedback of the experts and other learners. They also learned what they were interested in and found their own way to learn without any given formality. However, some learners required more structured instruction rather than their autonomous exploring activities. Also, they complained about the inefficiency because of the use of tools that were not familiar with them. Additionally, there were some learners who felt unhappy about sharing the results of their activities in open online spaces. Reflecting the responses of the learners and the teacher, the final design principles were developed. They include seven components: the principle of encouraging openness, the principle of facilitating the sharing of artifacts, the principle of supporting autonomy, the principle of developing information literacy, the principle of providing abundant online resources, the principle of supporting teacher presence, and the principle of aggregating distributed activities. In addition, the steps to which the design principles were applied (before, during, and after the class) were developed as a result of the research.Based on the above results, the factors that can affect the successful connectivism, the difficulties of realizing connectivism, and some issues when connectvism is applied to the formal educational context were discussed. Furthermore, it was suggested for the future work that the formation of a connection should be identified in a longer term by applying the principles for more than one semester, that a more diverse Web 2.0 or social networking tools should be utilized, and that the principles should be applied not only to formal educational contexts but also to informal or non-formal learning situations. This research will add to the body of knowledge of connectivism in the sense that it proposes a conceptual model of connectivism. Further, it overcomes the limitations of existing studies by suggesting the design principles of personal learning environment that provide structured activities while supporting learners’ autonomy.
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