Innovate to Educate: [Re]Design for Personalize Learning — from mobl21.com/blog

The Symposium on [Re]Design for Personalized Learning has begun.

An initiative of the SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association) with ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), this collaborative effort asserts that the education system can more efficiently and effectively meet the needs of all students through a true paradigm shift from a mass production to a mass customization learning system.

An excerpt from the SIIA-ASCD-CCSSO Symposium Primer:
Some education leaders are becoming more focused on personalizing learning as critical to meeting the needs of all students.  They understand that changing student outcomes requires transforming their experience and our current education system.  They recognize the definition of educational insanity:  offering the same type of education model over and over again, and expecting a different result.  These leaders also see that educational equity is not simply about equal access and inputs, but as importantly requires that a student’s educational path, curriculum, instruction and schedule be personalized to meet her unique needs.  Reform efforts that continue to focus on the factory model, one-size fits all approach to learning are unlikely to make a sufficient difference for too many students in this knowledge-age when expectations are higher than ever.

In contrast to trends in other industries to personalize products, services, and the user experience – in part by leveraging continually evolving technologies – education has only scratched the surface on the potential to personalize the learner experience.  Such efforts continue to be the exception rather than the rule and often represent a “tweaking” of the traditional model rather than the necessary systemic redesign of how we educate our children.  Similarly, students have come to expect personalization in every other aspect of their lives, including through services like Facebook, Netflix and iTunes, to name a few.  If Google and Amazon can thoughtfully leverage customer data and virtual communities to better serve each person’s unique preferences and interests from afar, then education can do so for each student from a near — to understand each one’s performance level, learning style and learning preferences and then adjust instructional strategies and content to meet those needs.

Read the full primer here: http://www.siia.net/pli/primer.doc

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From DSC:
Eventually, we will have to deal with some major changing student expectations. Perhaps that’s this year..? Next year? 5 years down the line…? I’m not sure. But with the storm brewing, we don’t want to discount changing student expectations. We need to adapt and deliver and meet changing expectations.

Personalized Learning: Object, Lesson, Course & School — from EdReformer.com by Tom Vander Ark

There’s lots of talk about personalized learning these days.  It shows up in a lot of school plans, i3 grants, and individual development plans. Wikipedia even has a definition: “Personalized Learning is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning support to meet the needs and aspirations of individual learners.”

That’s a good start, but I’d like to add a couple layers to the definition.  Educators often talk about personalization at the lessons level where “accommodations” are made for reading level and English language learners.   Projects have long been a great way to differentiate and leverage student interest.

In a digital learning environment, personalization at the lesson level can be a choice between small group instruction, online tutoring, a simulation or a learning game.  School of One is a good example of targeting lessons by level, interest, and modality.

From DSC:
What if we had a “textbook” like this? One that targeted your social/learning network on a particular topic? Personalized…customized…and constantly up-to-date. Interesting…

(Quality may or may not be a concern…depending upon one’s social/learning network.)

flipboard.com -- what if we had textbooks like this?


In Designing e-Learning Motivation Makes all the Difference — from Allen Interactions

What was deeply personal to one group was irrelevant and pointless to another.

This is exactly the problem we face so often as designers of e-learning.  Our subject matter experts or project owners live and breathe the content we are to teach. And they expect that the same values that have given significance to the content for them over many years can be directly transferred to the learners.  Unfortunately, that’s impossible.  To get learners engaged in understanding new content and performing new skills, we as designers need to tie the content to some motivation existing in the learner, or to manufacture an urgency (using game design, networking, or simulation aspects) that the learners buy into.  This is important in all learning, but particularly so in e-learning where learners are, for the most part, working entirely on their own.

So equal to the task of analyzing content and designing instruction is the challenge of understanding our learners and designing interactivity that will provide personal motivation.

Here are some ideas for designing for motivation:

  • Ensure learners are aware of meaningful consequences
  • Develop a sense of risk
  • Ensure the learner benefits from adaptive content and branching
  • Draw the learner in by expert storytelling and creation of suspense
  • Appreciate the aesthetic appeal of graphics and media
  • Engage in meta-thinking with questions whose importance is elevated through multiple-step tasks and delayed judgment

Study shows which technology factors improve learning — EdNetNews.com

Technology-assisted classes help students stay in school – reducing drop-out rates

  • The most important factor that Project RED found in reducing drop-out rates is using technology frequently in intervention classes. Students in reading intervention, special education, Title I (poverty program) and English Language Learners benefit from the individualized instruction that technology can provide best.
  • Principal leadership is the second most important factor in reducing dropout rates. Change management requires trained and committed leaders who are able to drive the school culture in new directions. Principals who model and lead technology usage are associated with schools with reduced dropout rates.
  • Daily use of technology in core classes is the third most important factor. Just as students can take control of their iPod, they also want to take control of their learning. Student engagement is one of the serious issues facing schools with high-entertainment-value options available elsewhere,

“We found that technology-infused classes in core subject areas, such as science and math, and in intervention classes such as Reading, Title I, English Language Learners and special education, were a significant factor in improvement. They were Key Implementation Factors in higher high stakes test score improvements, dropout rate reduction,, and improved discipline, tied with low students per computer ratios, “ said Jeanne Hayes, President of the Hayes Connection and co-author of the study.

  • Schools with 1:1 learning programs have better education success than do schools with fewer computing devices. Schools with one computing device per student also performed significantly better than schools with higher ratios, such as 3 students per computer.
  • Schools with 1:1 programs reported a 15 point reduction in disciplinary actions and a 13 point decrease in dropout rates as compared to all other schools.
  • Schools with properly implemented programs – those with frequent use of collaboration and online testing for improvement – found even greater gains. Compared to all 1:1 schools, properly implemented programs report a 15 point gain in high stakes test score improvement and even larger improvements in graduation rates and college attendance plans.

Time to know -- 1:1 for K-12

KnowledgeWorks.org

Envisioning a World of Learning — from blog.futureofed.org by Katherine Prince

The launch of KnowledgeWorks’ new website has provided us with an occasion to articulate more precisely what we mean when we say that we want to transform education in the US from a world of schooling to a world of learning.  Here’s an extract from it describing what we envision:

A world of learning
The vision emerging from our study of the future doesn’t much resemble the industrial-era world of schooling most of us know. Instead, we foresee a world of learning where:

  • Education centers on the needs of learners, not those of institutions. Teaching is tailored to an individual student’s needs and abilities.
  • Learners take charge of their education. Students and families seek out information and experiences from an array of sources rather than depending on schools to direct their learning.
  • Children gain 21st-century knowledge and skills – how to make decisions, solve problems and create solutions – through hands-on experiences that cross subject areas and are connected to the real world.
  • Success is judged through a wide array of measures that account for different learning styles and assess capabilities and progress, not simply acquisition of knowledge.
  • All learners have easy access to technology and other tools that open doors to information and knowledge.
  • Learners are supported in all parts of their lives, with physical, emotional and social health being nurtured alongside intellectual growth.
  • Teachers are more than content specialists. The teaching profession diversifies to include such roles as learning coaches, classroom coordinators, cognitive specialists, resource managers and community liaisons.
  • Learning isn’t limited to a physical place or time of day, but is mobile and constant, with wireless technologies allowing learning anywhere and anytime.

16th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning
November 3-5, 2010 | The Caribe Royale Hotel and Convention Center
The Power of Online Learning: Stimulating New Possibilities

  

Keynote Address

Peter Smith

Peter Smith, Ed.D.

Colleges for the 21st Century: the New Ecology of Learning
Emerging information technology and Web 2.0 have permanently changed the possibilities and potential of higher education. With the decline of content as the critical determinant of quality, there are three over-arching quality indicators that support “merit for the many”: personalization, customization, and mobility.

Dr. Peter Smith will address these quality indicators in his keynote address. In the talent-friendly College for the 21st Century (C21C), he argues, services will be organized around the needs of the learner, not the habits of the institution (emphasis DSC). Sharing common characteristics, C21Cs will tap into a new ecology of learning that supports personalized and customized learning around the world. Their purposes will include recognizing, creating and then validating merit in each learner and making it portable.

Adaptive learning: Putting an idea into practice at the School of One — from EducationNext.org by Paul E. Peterson

Time magazine touted “the School of One” as one of the 50 top innovations of 2009—the only educational innovation to be given that honor. As described in Time, “each day, students in the School of One are given a unique lesson plan — a ‘daily playlist’— tailored to their learning style and rate of progress that includes a mix of virtual tutoring, in-class instruction and educational video games (emphasis DSC). I stopped by a New York City middle school using the School of One last week to see how new technologies that help teachers adapt to each student’s learning level actually work in practice.

Educators, like designers, can benefit from identifying the student price point, the material the student is now ready and prepared to learn.  With adaptive testing technologies now available, schools can quickly and efficiently obtain weekly, perhaps daily, information on what a student knows. Teaching can zero in on the price point, so the student is not given something that is either too advanced or too repetitive of what he or she already knows.

School of One takes this idea one step further by also trying to identify student interests and learning styles as well.  If a boy is a Little Leaguer; then baseball statistics may be the best way to teach math.  If a girl plays volleyball, the examples can be modified accordingly.

Is ‘The School of One’ the future of schooling? — from dangerouslyirrelevant.org

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What Is Personalized Learning?– from theAplus.org

Personalized Learning is a unique, blended classroom-based and nonclassroom-based public educational model that is tailored to the needs and interests of each individual student. Personalized Learning is a 21st century, “on the leading edge” approach to public education that honors and recognizes the unique gifts, skills, passions, and attributes of each child. Personalized Learning is dedicated to developing individualized learning programs for each child whose intent is to engage each child in the learning process in the most productive and meaningful way to optimize each child’s learning potential and success.

The key attributes that comprise the Personalized Learning model are based upon a solid foundation of the latest educational research findings as to how students learn most successfully, including a strong emphasis on parental involvement, smaller class sizes, more one-on-one teacher and student interaction, attention to differences in learning styles, student-driven participation in developing the learning process, technology access, varied learning environments, teacher and parent development programs, and choices in curriculum programs. No other educational model offered in today’s public education system has integrated these proven educational research results in such an in-depth and comprehensive manner to serve the diverse needs of today’s public education students.

What is personalized learning?

From DSC:
Looking at the above chart, I’m reminded of the need for each of us to develop our own learning ecosystem, as there are so many choices/approaches/tools/methods out there; however there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. There is no silver bullet for everyone to achieve their optimal amount of learning.

© 2024 | Daniel Christian