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Personalized Learning
Would you be surprised to learn that “Charles Darwin, Patrick Henry, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Madame Curie, Orville Wright, Albert Einstein, […] were encouraged to leave school as a result of their alleged inability to learn” (Morgan, 2014, p.34)?
What made these extraordinary people poor candidates for public education? Felder, in his explanation about why many engineering students were not successful, rendered the verdict that it was instruction that was lacking, not student desire, intelligence, or effort (Felder, 2005). One solution that has become popular in the last decade or so in education has been to differentiate instruction.
In 1983, Howard Garner nailed his eight intelligences to the door of education ushering in an approach to education that acknowledged the diversity of learners. In fact, learning styles have been introduced and described by many educational psychologists and the numbers of identified learning styles by all of these educational psychologists number in the dozens. Online learning is making inroads in personalized learning that puts the student at the center of their own learning in new ways. As a result of MOOCs and Open Courseware, students have come to expect to experience learning on their own terms.
With the explosion of a seemingly unlimited supply of information on the internet and the self-organizing nature of cyberspace, people are connecting, sharing, linking, tagging, and collaborating in ways that are ever changing and evolving. The collaborative nature of this digital frontier is driven by the human desire to connect through social networking, social publishing, and social bookmarking to create knowledge, share information, and share expertise. Online learning is close on the heels of the digitally literate residents of cyberspace. Learning by example, education is seeing the merits and benefits of learning that is personalized and socially situated. In much the same way that digital consumers are carving out a personal presence on the internet on their own terms, teachers are exploring innovations in digital literacy to facilitate personalized learning. Personalized learning has moved beyond the mere acknowledgment that learners have diverse needs to the diverse ways that students can interact with their learning (Skrabut, n.d.).
In the past, teachers bore the brunt of the responsibility for providing for learner diversity. They were responsible for the arduous task of identifying the learning styles of their students and then, planning the instructional strategies and activities tailored to each of those learning styles for each of their students. This was an overwhelming and difficult task to implement. Traditional education continues to offer a one-size fits all education; seemingly ignoring the diversity of learners. If one-size fits all does not meet the needs of all learners, then, should learning be tailored for each student? Even if a teacher could do such a thing, implementation of such a curriculum would be impossible to execute. So what to do?
Constructivism is on the rise. It is most evident in online learning where students work in isolation and are responsible for directing their own learning. Constructivism puts learning in the hands of students. Students have choices in extending their learning to include multiple presentations of content through discovery learning. When learning is student centered, the student’s work is self-directed which promotes autonomy, motivation, and engagement. When the teacher takes on the roles of facilitator, guide, tutor, motivator, and expert, students have the opportunity to tailor their own learning by choosing the ways they experience and respond to content through a variety of modes of presentation resulting in personalized learning (Felder, 2005) (Chatti, 2011). This coupled with ubiquitous digital literacies has resulted in new and exciting innovations in personalized learning.
The evolution of online learning is beginning to recognize the limitations of learning management systems. Students want the freedom they are accustomed to as digital natives. They long to break free from the shackles of the structured LMS. There is a move to deliver courses in social networking sites. Another trend is to create a learning network with an LMS at the center from which students start their learning. Students then focus their energies in personal learning environments which could exist as satellite learning environments based in weblogs. In the last decade or so educators have described this kind of learning as personal learning environments (Skrabut, n.d).
Brick and mortar institutions in K-12 and higher education have begun to explore this idea of personal learning environments. The New Media Consortium in their 2015 Horizon Report identified personalized learning as one of the trends and challenges for the next five years (New Media Consortium, n.d). Personalized learning includes all of the places where students interact with learning which includes formal and informal learning. Formal learning takes place in classrooms and learning management systems. Informal learning takes place anywhere a student interacts with content online or in person; learning labs, study groups, student centers, kitchen tables, discussion boards, social networking groups, and so on (Skrabut, n.d.). In fact, brick and mortar institutions are innovating in ways that may provide direction for online learning.
In a research study by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, improvements in academic achievement have been realized by the implementation of personalized learning through two pilot programs. Students have performed at or above national standards on standardized testing as a result of the new initiatives and strategies in personalized learning. Their model for personalized learning includes “learner profiles, personal learning paths, competency-based progression, and/or flexible learning environments” (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2014, p. 2). As online educators seek to structure personalized learning environments, they may find that developing learning paths for students may provide a safety net for learning when learning leaves the LMS and resides in individual student’s learning spaces.
Reference:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (2014, November). Early progress on personalized learning executive summary. Retrieved from http://collegeready.gatesfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Early-Progress-on-Personalized-Learning-Executive-Summary.pdf
Chatti, A., Jarke, M., & Specht, M. (2011). The 3P Learning Model. Educational Technology & Society. 12(4), 74-85.
Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (2005). Understanding student differences. Journal of Engineering Education, 94(1), 57-72. Retrieved from http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/Understanding_Differences.pdf
Skrabut, S. A. (n.d.). Personal learning environments: The natural way of learning. Retrieved from http://api.ning.com/files/nMkb- Djjb3f30USAVKdmJnD*0bJfB3GkNiB6BxvMtCTQ7JSf0STp0FDIlOkncJhye3gYh22VryneVJkZmeD2JDnYydACUA/PersonalLearningEnvironmentsTheNaturalWayofLearning.pdf
It seems that they were “none the worse for wear” and were able to teach themselves, create innovations, and take on world-wide leadership roles. Sir Ken Robinson would say that education was “teaching creativity and innovation out” of these individuals, and like the prospective engineering students in the article, Understanding Student Differences by Felder, those individuals made it possible for their dismissal through their lack of adherence to educational expectations brought on by their frustration and “dissatisfaction with their instruction” (Felder, 2005, p. 57) (Robinson, 2006).
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