Personalized learning meaning

Personalized learning dates back to the beginning of the previous century in the long-standing work of John Dewey; who claimed that learning is constructed by the individual and therefore it must be experiential and active.

Personalized learning means tailoring learning to individual students’ strengths, needs, and personal interests. This is through providing “a diverse variety of educational programs, learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic support strategies that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students” (Glossary of Educational Reform, 2015, para. 1).

In personalized learning, teachers are responsible for co-constructing the learning with the student and travelling with the student to understand the pacing, his learning preferences, and interests.

So, personalized learning is a student-centred education model that aims to address the individual needs, skills, and interests of each student and so enhance learning.

To attain such an aim, it is necessary to understand the student — his or her personal preferences, interests, and aspirations—and make use of that understanding by bringing more variety and flexibility into teaching.

Understanding students

Your relationships with students are important because the more you interact, and connect with them the better you learn about what they need, want, and prefer to learn in your classes. Those personal ties you build with them are so powerful; they can break down all communication bumps and motivate students to speak their minds.

So, classroom interactions are key. They can tell a lot about our students and support us better in relating to them. We need, therefore, to do our best to make them more fruitful through observing regularly our students and reflecting on how our practices impact their feelings and learning behaviours.

Another important element to understand your students is their engagement.

What can we learn about those students who resist taking part in their learning: participate in discussions, task achievement, collaboration, etc?

Apart from their unwillingness to learn, we can know nothing about their learning process and what they need to progress. Even after assessment results, we get barely an idea about the real reasons that lie behind their performance.

Why?

Because when students are engaged in learning we gain feedback on how much they’re learning in our classes.

The amount of feedback we get from students depends on the kind of engagement opportunities we’re providing them with.

The more we involve them in the creation of their learning pathways through encouraging their sense of responsibility for learning, and fostering their ability to navigate the learning process, the more we learn about how they are getting along with our content.

Even when your time or teaching context does not allow for more self-directed learning activities, still you can engage your students. This is through encouraging their interaction, thinking, and collaboration, and devoting some time to their reflections (using exit tickets).

Creating those moments where students develop deep, personal connections with each other, and with you is a core aspect of a personalized learning model. These won’t just engage them but support you to understand who they are.

Variety and flexibility

To address the individual needs, skills, and interests of each student, there is a need to vary the mode of instruction. This means that the lesson plan should include a variety of interaction patterns (whole-class, teacher-directed small group, independent work, student-student cooperation, group work, etc.), of learning materials that serve students’ interests and needs (including the use of technology).

Besides, using multiple instructional modes, varying the time, place, and pace of learning is also essential to individualize learning.

The use of technology including the flipped classroom can help students access courses anytime, everywhere, thereby learning beyond a traditional school day or building.

Within personalized learning, pace, the speed at which progress is made, is not determined by the organization of the textbook or the way teachers structure the lessons, but by individual progression or how a particular student may cover particular material at a particular time. This can help students reinforce a particular skill or standard and progress at their own pace and schedule.

But, does personalized learning mean differentiating and individualizing instruction?

Personalized learning goes beyond differentiating and individualizing instructions. Because you need to incorporate a deep understanding of each student’s interests, aspirations, backgrounds, and behavioural idiosyncrasies. And your students can learn in a group, one-to-one, face-to-face, or across the miles.

According to Redding (2014), there are four integral components of adopting a personalized approach in the classroom:

1. Student choice

Students can have choices in terms of content. This covers what they should know, be able to do, and the kind of materials that support their learning.

Choice can also be exercised in terms of the learning process (they can choose activities they need to practise) and learning products (the kind of performance that shows evidence of their learning).

Student’s choice does not imply that teachers abdicate their roles. Rather, it’s a means by which students become more engaged and invested in their education (Prain et al., 2013).

2. Greater access to learning resources

As stated before, to cover the variety of learning needs, teachers need to broaden the types of materials they use and make these available to students in their classrooms.

So, apart from textbooks, teachers can use great numbers of digitized resources—as well as books, films, artwork, literature, and artifacts.

Including visual and auditory resources and letting students and/or helping them choose and locate them can help provide various learning opportunities.

3. Greater control for students over their learning environment and learning strategies

Personalized learning is a community space where students reflect on their learning and are offered opportunities to discuss different approaches to learning, sort out problems, and develop their independent problem-solving skills.

In such a community, students are also supporting each other to learn, through sharing effective learning strategies. Using Web 2.0 tools and social networks, students can interact with each other beyond the classroom.

4. Frequent feedback on students’ work

Frequent feedback is a necessary component of personalized learning. It has two components: 1)making the criteria for success explicit to students. This is through teachers co-regulating different tasks for students, such as planning, goal setting, feedback, and reflection. 2) And students getting continual feedback on their efforts from the teacher, other students, and themselves through reflection (Blythe, 1998).

This means that students help one another through group learning, peer discussion, coaching, peer assessment, and monitoring of performance (Prain et al., 2013).

Hence, to bring these four essential elements of PL, is it necessary to use technology?

Personalized learning can take place in traditional (face-to-face) learning settings as well as in technology-enhanced learning settings.

While it can take place without technology, technology is a critical driver to providing opportunities to meet the students’ needs, abilities, and preferences. Because it provides access both to managing and documenting the learning process and to accessing rich resources.

For instance, smart e-learning systems can help dynamically track and manage the learning needs of all students, and provide a platform to access engaging learning content, resources and learning opportunities.

However, although technology is crucial to the anytime, everywhere nature of personalized learning, relying heavily on it to deliver a personalized education can also prove to be a barrier.

How about assessments?

In personalized learning, assessments should encompass a broader range of measures beyond performance on academic tests, including a range of assessment techniques, with an emphasis on formative assessment that engages the student.

These can include portable electronic student portfolios, performance-based assessments, observations, and learning management systems.

So, continuous assessment is necessary to diagnose every student’s learning needs and abilities.

Final thoughts

Personalized learning can support building the capacity of the educational system to meet the learning needs of all students of any age.

Yet, it requires shifting the teacher’s role from instruction to mentoring, advising, consulting, and scaffolding each student’s learning to enhance his competencies: cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and social-emotional competencies.

Therefore, to implement effectively this approach we need to develop new pedagogical approaches and acquire some new skills in the effective use of information technologies, mentoring learning, mediating values, and encouraging self-motivation.

Not only are professional development opportunities necessary for teachers to use this learning approach, but there is also a need for a radical approach to school organization; community institutions, and social services.

Schools should offer many pathways, including different courses, programmes, and learning opportunities in and out of school so that each student may create his or her goal path (Glossary of Educational Reform, 2013).

So, it’s important to rethink the tools and resources available to teachers and students to ensure equity in access to technology infrastructure.

References

Blythe, T. (1998). The teaching for understanding guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Glossary of Educational Reform. (2013). Learning pathway. Portland, ME: Great Schools Part¬nership. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/learning-pathway/
Glossary of Educational Reform. (2015). Personalized learning. Portland, ME: Great Schools Partnership. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/personalized-learning/
Prain, V., Cox, P., Deed, C., Dorman, J., Edwards, D., Farrelly, C.Yager, Z. (2013). Personalised learning: Lessons to be learnt. British Educational Research Journal, 39(4), 654–676.
Redding, S. (2014). Personal competencies in personalized learning. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University, Center on Innovations in Learning. Retrieved from http://www.centeril.org