Personalized Learning

As both teachers and learners, we have all experienced the indisputable fact that learning abilities can vary greatly amongst groups of individuals. One of the most significant differences I've noticed between my adult and young learners is in their motivations to learn. Particularly with adult learners, their motivations are more reflexive and often contemplate questions like, "Am I exploring my personal/professional interests and goals?", "Is what I'm learning relevant to my life and/or work?", "Can my progress be monitored and tested, and will it be evident to me?". These motivations not only vary across individuals within the same classroom, but also across cultures, countries and learning contexts. In other words, adult learners present a great need for personalized learning in order to feel like they are in fact, learning. Currently, I work for a digital technology company that specializes in providing business English and communication training for corporations and professionals via online virtual classrooms. As a coach, my main task is to conduct 1-on-1 sessions with these professionals seeking English language learning solutions to help them develop the skills required for new opportunities at home and abroad. I enjoy being able to provide these individuals with more personal learning plans tailored to their professional interests. We also free-talk about many topics they are interested in. I am immensely keen on exploring this emerging market to further depths!

Yes, it's true that writing detailed learner profiles, individual learning plans, differentiated course materials and assessments is very time consuming and sometimes it's frankly unrealistic to expect it from a classroom teacher. I have seen cases where teachers are teaching different subjects to split classes ( Science and Maths to grade 5 and 6 for example) with in the mix some students at the grade 2 level, a non verbal student at the kindergarten level and a variety of other students who also need personalized learning. So the reality is that they are supposed to come up with differentiated materials, assessments for every single day for and remember the learning style of each of these students on top of their general split classes. Seems still feasible? OK so let's clarify....it means that they need to have the materials/activities/assessments for a kindergarten class (there is one student at the kindergarten level), another set o for the student at the grade 2 level...+slightly differentiated materials for those students at grade level but with personalized learning plans...and of course they need to teach their grade 5 and 6 class! Personalized learning education technologies driven by data analytics and artificial intelligence are needed and will be a relief. Some parts of the individual learning plans, for example, can absolutely be left to the technology as it's often quite repetitive.

It is my experience and it is generally accepted that mixed-ability classrooms are the norm these days. As a teacher I am personally interested in differentiated instruction. It is for this reason that I am interested in personalized learning. Today the reality is that any teacher would be involved in producing individualized learning plans for students. As we read, there is little doubt about the future of personalized learning. It is the Holy Grail of teaching. Except that it is not easy to practice and becomes incredibly difficult for any teacher to do for large number of students. It is for this reason that differentiated instruction in classrooms advocated today is clearly identified as not personalized learning or individualized instruction. However, the promise of the future is that personalized learning will be a reality for the majority of students. In my opinion, we would have achieved the Holy Grail of Teaching. In my opinion, for this reason you should vote for personalized learning.

At the end of grade 7, I wrote a Math 8 Challenge exam (which I passed- yay) and was placed a year ahead in math. A year later, I was completing Math 9 ahead of schedule, and unfortunately stuck in a difficult situation. The only opportunity that I had to take my next math course would be to take early morning classes at my future high school, and then walk back to my middle school for the remainder of my classes. It wasn't a highly desirable option (early mornings, scary high school students, walking 15 minutes per day exposed to the elements), so I opted to wait and ended up with a gap year in my math education despite my love for the subject. As a teacher myself now, I see how varied my students are in their understanding/ability, and I see the way that a lack of individual pacing affects a substantial portion of my students - strong students who enjoy math are bored and I fear they'll lose their passion, and weak students feel overwhelmed and don't see the sort of success that would potentially help them start to enjoy the material. I believe that the more learning is individualized, the more we will be able to help students pace their workloads in a way that builds confidence and addresses key issues that hold them back. Obviously advances in technology are essential in making this type of learning a possibility, and I believe this emerging market is heavily supported by many of the other emerging markets listed here in this forum. In fact, personalized learning seems like it is the natural next step as these other emerging markets progress.

The mainstream in education has lots of limits when it comes to enhancing students’ learning ability and unwrapping their talents. Learning theories such as Dr. Howard Gardner’s theory on multiple intelligence and many others have shown that the learning process from one individual to another one is rarely similar. Learning abilities within a group of people vary a lot. It is therefore not realistic to believe that all students will reach their full intellectual potential through the mainstream in education. The challenge is to provide students with appropriate learning materials that would enable them to thoroughly explore their potential and discover their talents and passion. The use of personalized and adaptive learning technologies is providing very good and effective results in this regard. Schools nowadays have access to a plethora of educative platforms that help the students to develop their skills according to their level. The adaptive feature of these platforms is an asset that maintains students’ engagement and motivation. These technology tools that use data analytics to customize a learning process that suits each students’ skills and level of ability are really effective. They produce better learning outcomes than the mainstream of education. I too believe that technology-assisted personalized and adaptive learning will become the reality for the students of students in the near future.