Objective
“The same three effects emerged (in
education): the change of the market, a more personalized experience, and the
creation of a single global market.” (Bowen, 2012)
Reflective
The proliferation of technology has
resulted in revolutions in every aspect of teaching and learning. Given the
fact that learning content can be delivered online, many lecture videos from
world-class institutions are accessible from the internet, even many of the
local university professors start to post their lectures online, what actually
attracts students to your classroom, what exactly makes a real teacher special
– compared to all that can be offered in a virtual world? The quote above gave
me the answer – personalized learning experience.
When I was a student back in China,
I was one of the two hundred sitting in the lecture hall, passively listening,
working on the same homework, and receiving a right-or-wrong kind of feedback
from the grader. With deep appreciations to PIDP program instructors, I have
had completely different learning experience – a more personalized learning
experience. Students get to choose from three directions, social media, digital
media and low tech – which acknowledge individual’s background, existing
knowledge, personal interest and future career paths. Students also have
options of what topics are discussed in the forum, and topics to research about
in the journals, and videos; based on these options, we also receive personalized
and tailored feedback. In other words, learning content, assessment, and
feedback – most components of our learning experience is personalized and we as
learners, take the ownership to construct our own learning map. The outcomes
are obvious. Being a passive, unmotivated learner in the past, I am now more
engaged in my self-constructed learning experience, more motivated to put in
time and effort to those that most interest me. The difference in my own
learning experience convinces me the effectiveness of personalized learning. It
also motivates me to research further on the meaning, values and implications
of personalized learning.
Interpretative
We live in
an era when personalizing learning experience is not just a possibility but
almost becoming a natural expectation from learners. We read personalized news
from Flipboard; we listen to personalized music playlist from Pandora; Amazon
personalizes our recommendation list based on purchasing history; Google
personalizes search results based on browsing history. In the midst of everything
being customized, have we done enough to personalize learning for our students?
The term personalized learning
often refers to “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” (Personalized Learning, 2014). Personalization of
learning is one of the most effective ways of improving the quality of
learning. It includes thoughtful consideration of numerous factors such as
learner’s profiles, learning materials, learning strategies, learning styles,
cognitive styles, multiple intelligence and many more (Samah,
Yahaya, & Ali, 2011). In a highly personalized learning
environment, learner is responsible to organize, customize and shape the
learning environment with instructor’s guidance. Attentions on individual
difference was found to increase learner’s satisfaction, motivation and
eventually academic performance significantly (Lim, Morris, & Yoon, 2006). One of the
theoretical frameworks on personalized learning is intentional learning theory.
This theory hypothesizes that, awareness of the individual’s intentions about
learning (e.g. strategies, importance, timing, and personal learning goals) is
the fundamental of how an individual effectively learns, interact, performs and
engages in learning. (Martinez, 1999).
A few
strategies of personalized approach have been proposed (Gagne, Wager, Golas, & Keller, 2005)
·
Whole-person strategy: focuses on the cognitive,
emotion, intention and social aspects of learners.
·
Name-recognized strategy: emphasizes the
recognition of learners’ names, which is valued by most of people as being
acknowledged as an individual
·
Self-described strategy: based on answers
provided by learners
·
Cognitive-based strategy: is an approach that
only refers to the cognitive process, strategy and ability of learners
Among these strategies, the
whole-person strategy is the most comprehensive approach towards the most
personalized learning environment that recognizes the most complete aspects of
different learning profiles. However, due to time, technological and
administrative constrains, other strategies can be implemented as a compromised
solution.
As the importance and
effectiveness of personalized learning is increasingly recognized increasingly
in the society in recent years, there also exist many issues and challenges in
this field (Santos, Baldiris, & Boticario, 2011), which includes:
·
the need of support for adaptive learning
scenarios
·
lack of frameworks for providing layered-based
infrastructure covering the interoperability required to manage the whole range
of standards
·
limited research and shortage of best practices
Decisional
Despite having talked about
personalized learning for many years, most of educational professionals, including
myself, have been slow to implement personalized. At least, on the content
level, we can help student to create their own learning experience yet still
meet the expectations of the general curriculum. This is actually being
experimented in many classrooms. At Hunterdon Central Regional Central High
School in New Jersey, students have started creating their own personalized
learning plans with teacher’s help
(Richardson, 2012).
Here is what I decided to do in my
future practice to implement more of the personalized learning features -
Mindset Change - First
of all, this means a change of skillset, and also a mindset. I have to be
comfortable with the diverse routes that students choose, which may mean, a surprisingly
variety of student’s questions, reflections, activities, and plans. It is both
risk and reward, requiring lots of adjusting. The mindset change also involves
a different view of my role. I am in the classroom to help our students connect
course goals with their own passion. In some cases, students have real difficulties
finding their passions. My challenge is to probe targeted questions, to steer
students to multiple resources that may spark interests, and at the end,
encourage students to collect and share what they enjoy in their learning, and
to help students see the connections.
Offering Flexibility in Learning
- Secondly, in order to personalize student’s learning experience, I am going
to offer some flexibilities in at least some of the assessments. Many Learning
Management Systems (LMS) offer personalization of the interface for individual
students and student groups. Although I have used Blackboard Learn for quite a
while, I haven’t given my students enough opportunities to personalize their
online environment. In the future, I will enable customization features, and
demonstrate students how to customize their page and their group page,
encourage them to add built-in tools, incorporate online forum and journal
writing into the curriculum so that my students can add content, construct and
monitor their own learning. Technological tools, such as ALEKS (an assessment-based
learning aid which designs learning topics based on student’s assessment
results) can also be involved to help personalized learning experience. At the
end, I should realize that, learning occurs within a specific didactical
setting and with the aid of appropriate tools, therefore, learners should be
provided possibilities but not too many to be overwhelmed.
Giving Personalized and Adaptive Feedback – Feedback is especially
critical in personalized learning. The feedback should not only address on the
content level – what students have understood, and what corrections they should
make, but also consider the affective and motivational factors. I think a
personalized learning experience should also emphasize on the affection domain and
this might be something that technological tool cannot replace from a real and
considerable teacher (Kim, 2012).
Cultivating positive emotions and reducing negative emotions can benefit
learning process and outcomes. Including individual and personalized support
for positive affective experiences is one of the central concerns for
personalized learning. To implement this idea in my feedback, I decide to write
at least one personal message to each student, recognizing their academic improvement,
stimulating curiosity, promoting student’s perception of task value based on
their majors and personal goals in the long term. In all other formative
assessment feedback, I will always address their names at the very beginning,
and point out what they have achieved, and offer personalized advice of future
learning strategies.
Preparing Self-Directed Learners – I believe the ultimate goal of
personalized learning is to let learners decide what to learn, to identify a
problem that requires learning to rectify; to let learners plan and acquire
resources and carry out this learning plan; to implement the learning plan and
evaluate learning outcomes, and decide when to end the learning cycle when
learning is complete. Guiding our students to personalize learning experience
is also to cultivate life-long learning skills, and eventually help our
learners become a self-directed learner.
Bibliography
Bowen, J. A. (2012). Teaching Naked: Howe Moving
Technology Out of Your College Classroom will Improve Student Learning
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