Posts Tagged ‘personalized learning’

personalized learning

Personalized Learning: What It Really Is and Why It Really Matters

 and 

Personalized Learning: What It Really Is and Why It Really Matters

The following is a re-post from a 2016 EDUCAUSE Review article of ours with minor updates.

(1) the circumstances under which personalized learning can help students and

(2) the best way to evaluate the real educational value for products that are marketed under the personalized learning banner.

The most descriptive label we could come up with for the practices that the two of us have observed in our school visits might be undepersonalized teaching.

The most stereotypical depersonalized teaching experience is the large lecture class, but there are many other situations in which teachers do not connect with individual students and/or meet the students’ specific needs. For example, even a small class might contain students with a wide-enough range of skills, aptitudes, and needs that the teacher cannot possibly serve them all equally well. Or a student may have needs (or aptitudes) that the teacher simply doesn’t get an opportunity to see within the amount of contact time that the class allows. The truth is that students fall through the cracks all the time, even in the best classes taught by the best teachers. Failing a course is the most visible evidence, but more often students drift through the class and earn a passing grade—maybe even a good grade—without getting any lasting educational benefit.

personalized learning as a practice rather than a product

Technology then becomes an enabler for increasing meaningful personal contact. In our observations, we have seen three main technology-enabled strategies for lowering classroom barriers to one-on-one teacher/student (and student/student) interactions:

  1. Moving content broadcast out of the classroom: Even in relatively small classes, a lot of class time can be taken up with content broadcast such as lectures and announcements. Personalized learning strategies often try to move as much broadcast out of class time as possible in order to make room for more conversation. This strategy is sometimes called “flipping” because it is commonly accomplished by having the teacher record the lectures they would normally give in class and assign the lecture videos as homework,
  2. Turning homework time into contact time: In a traditional class, much of the work that the students do is invisible to the teacher. For some aspects, such as homework problems, teachers can observe the results but are often severely limited by time constraints.Personalized learning approaches often allow the teacher to observe the students’ work in digital products, so that there is more opportunity to coach students.
  3. Providing tutoring: Sometimes students get stuck in problem areas that don’t require help from a skilled human instructor. Although software isn’t good at teaching everything, it can be good at teaching some things. Personalized learning approaches can offload the tutoring for those topics to adaptive learning software that gives students interactive feedback while also turning the students’ work into contact time by making it observable to the teacher at a glance through analytics.

 

personalized learning

In the business world, an analogous initiative might be called “business process redesign.” Emphasis is on process. The primary question being asked is, “What is the most effective way to accomplish the goal?” The redesigned process may well need software, but it is the process itself that matters. In personalized learning, the process we are redesigning is that of teaching individual students what they need to learn from a class as effectively as possible (though we can easily imagine applying the same kind of exercise to improving advising, course registration, or any other important function).

Self-Regulated Learning

Students in the course spend part of their class time in a computer lab, working at their own pace through an adaptive learning math program. Students who already know much of the content can move through it quickly, giving them more time to master the concepts that they have yet to learn. Students who have more to learn can take their time and get tutoring and reinforcement from the software. Teachers, now freed from the task of lecturing, roam the room and give individual attention to those students who need it. They can also see how students are doing, individually and as a class, through the software’s analytics. But the course has another critical component that takes place outside the computer lab, separate from the technology. Every week, the teachers meet with the students to discuss learning goals and strategies. Students review the goals they set the previous week, discuss their progress toward those goals, evaluate whether the strategies they used helped them, and develop new goals for the next week.

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more on personalized learning
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=personalized+learning

De Vos personalized learning common core

Betsy DeVos Touts Personalized Learning, Slams Common Core and Reform Efforts

By Jenny Abamu     Jan 16, 2018

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-01-16-betsy-devos-touts-personalized-learning-slams-common-core-and-reform-efforts

U.S. Education Secretary spared no words in her critique of education reform efforts during the Bush and Obama administrations. “I don’t think there is much we can hold onto, from a federal level, that we can say was a real success,”

This is not the first time DeVos has praised personalized learning. The education secretary visited Thomas Russell Middle School in Milpitas, Calif

Her vision of personalized learning has plenty of detractors. Educators and administrators have already begun to voice their reservations about personalized learning in schools. At a gathering of educators in Oakland last October speakers decried what they described as the privatization of public education through the introduction of technology initiatives such as personalized learning. More recently, former AltSchool educator Paul Emerich wrote a blog post titled, “Why I Left Silicon Valley, EdTech, and ‘Personalized’ Learning,” where he offered critiques of the personalized learning movement in his school. The post touched on concerns about his workload and interactions with students.

Parents are raising pressure too. In at least two states, their concerns over screen-time and digital content used in online educational platform has forced districts to suspend the implementation of technology-enabled personalized learning programs such as Summit Learning.

De Vos pointed to previous federal-led education funding programs as a “carrot” that made little or no impact. Her critique is not unfounded: A report published last year by the Education Department’s research division found that the $7 billion School Improvement Grants program made “no significant impacts” on test scores, high school graduation rates or college enrollment.

Common Core is currently adopted in 36 states, according to EdWeek’s Common Core Tracker, last updated September 2017.

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DeVos: ‘Common Core Is Dead’; A Large Online Charter School Is Shut Down

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/01/20/578705608/devos-common-core-is-dead-a-large-online-charter-school-is-shut-down

One of the largest online charter schools in the country closed this week amid a financial and legal dispute with the state of Ohio.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in a keynote address this week to the American Enterprise Institute.
She also cited a survey by the American Federation of Teachers that 60 percent of its teachers reported having moderate to no influence over the content and skills taught in their own classrooms.
That same survey also noted that 86 percent of teachers said they do not feel respected by DeVos.

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more on personalized learning in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=personalized+learning

more on Common Core in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Common+core

next gen digital learning environment

Updating the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment for Better Student Learning Outcomes

a learning management system (LMS) is never the solution to every problem in education. Edtech is just one part of the whole learning ecosystem and student experience.

Therefore, the next generation digital learning environment (NGDLE), as envisioned by EDUCAUSE in 2015 …  Looking at the NGDLE requirements from an LMS perspective, I view the NGDLE as being about five areas: interoperability; personalization; analytics, advising, and learning assessment; collaboration; accessibility and universal design.

Interoperability

  • Content can easily be exchanged between systems.
  • Users are able to leverage the tools they love, including discipline-specific apps.
  • Learning data is available to trusted systems and people who need it.
  • The learning environment is “future proof” so that it can adapt and extend as the ecosystem evolves.

Personalization

  • The learning environment reflects individual preferences.
  • Departments, divisions, and institutions can be autonomous.
  • Instructors teach the way they want and are not constrained by the software design.
  • There are clear, individual learning paths.
  • Students have choice in activity, expression, and engagement.

Analytics, Advising, and Learning Assessment

  • Learning analytics helps to identify at-risk students, course progress, and adaptive learning pathways.
  • The learning environment enables integrated planning and assessment of student performance.
  • More data is made available, with greater context around the data.
  • The learning environment supports platform and data standards.

Collaboration

  • Individual spaces persist after courses and after graduation.
  • Learners are encouraged as creators and consumers.
  • Courses include public and private spaces.

Accessibility and Universal Design

  • Accessibility is part of the design of the learning experience.
  • The learning environment enables adaptive learning and supports different types of materials.
  • Learning design includes measurement rubrics and quality control.

The core analogy used in the NGDLE paper is that each component of the learning environment is a Lego brick:

  • The days of the LMS as a “walled garden” app that does everything is over.
  • Today many kinds of amazing learning and collaboration tools (Lego bricks) should be accessible to educators.
  • We have standards that let these tools (including an LMS) talk to each other. That is, all bricks share some properties that let them fit together.
  • Students and teachers sign in once to this “ecosystem of bricks.”
  • The bricks share results and data.
  • These bricks fit together; they can be interchanged and swapped at will, with confidence that the learning experience will continue uninterrupted.

Any “next-gen” attempt to completely rework the pedagogical model and introduce a “mash-up of whatever” to fulfil this model would fall victim to the same criticisms levied at the LMS today: there is too little time and training to expect faculty to figure out the nuances of implementation on their own.

The Lego metaphor works only if we’re talking about “old school” Lego design — bricks of two, three, and four-post pieces that neatly fit together. Modern edtech is a lot more like the modern Lego. There are wheels and rocket launchers and belts and all kinds of amazing pieces that work well with each other, but only when they are configured properly. A user cannot simply stick together different pieces and assume they will work harmoniously in creating an environment through which each student can be successful.

As the NGDLE paper states: “Despite the high percentages of LMS adoption, relatively few instructors use its more advanced features — just 41% of faculty surveyed report using the LMS ‘to promote interaction outside the classroom.'”

But this is what the next generation LMS is good at: being a central nervous system — or learning hub — through which a variety of learning activities and tools are used. This is also where the LMS needs to go: bringing together and making sense of all the amazing innovations happening around it. This is much harder to do, perhaps even impossible, if all the pieces involved are just bricks without anything to orchestrate them or to weave them together into a meaningful, personal experience for achieving well-defined learning outcomes.

  • Making a commitment to build easy, flexible, and smart technology
  • Working with colleges and universities to remove barriers to adopting new tools in the ecosystem
  • Standardizing the vetting of accessibility compliance (the Strategic Nonvisual Access Partner Program from the National Federation of the Blind is a great start)
  • Advancing standards for data exchange while protecting individual privacy
  • Building integrated components that work with the institutions using them — learning quickly about what is and is not working well and applying those lessons to the next generation of interoperability standards
  • Letting people use the tools they love [SIC] and providing more ways for nontechnical individuals (including students) to easily integrate new features into learning activities

My note: something just refused to be accepted at SCSU
Technologists are often very focused on the technology, but the reality is that the more deeply and closely we understand the pedagogy and the people in the institutions — students, faculty, instructional support staff, administrators — the better suited we are to actually making the tech work for them.

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Under the Hood of a Next Generation Digital Learning Environment in Progress

The challenge is that although 85 percent of faculty use a campus learning management system (LMS),1 a recent Blackboard report found that, out of 70,000 courses across 927 North American institutions, 53 percent of LMS usage was classified as supplemental(content-heavy, low interaction) and 24 percent as complementary (one-way communication via content/announcements/gradebook).2 Only 11 percent were characterized as social, 10 percent as evaluative (heavy use of assessment), and 2 percent as holistic (balanced use of all previous). Our FYE course required innovating beyond the supplemental course-level LMS to create a more holistic cohort-wide NGDLE in order to fully support the teaching, learning, and student success missions of the program.The key design goals for our NGDLE were to:

  • Create a common platform that could deliver a standard curriculum and achieve parity in all course sections using existing systems and tools and readily available content
  • Capture, store, and analyze any generated learner data to support learning assessment, continuous program improvement, and research
  • Develop reports and actionable analytics for administrators, advisors, instructors, and students

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more on LMS in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=LMS

more on learning outcomes in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=learning+outcomes

trends mobile devices

Report: Google Gaining in U.S. Classrooms, Apple’s iOS Slipping

By Richard Chang 06/21/17

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/06/21/report-google-gaining-in-u.s.-classrooms-apples-ios-slipping.aspx

some of the findings in Kahoot!’s first-ever EdTrends Report :
Google is gaining a stronghold in United States classrooms, with Chrome OS expanding its presence on school computers, while Apple’s iOS has been on the decline since the first quarter of 2015 among students and teachers.

Chromebook had the highest number of users among teachers (44 percent) and students (46 percent), when they were asked about their top devices used. Google’s Productivity Suite (G Suite or Classroom) was the most widely used productivity suite in U.S. classrooms, with 57 percent saying they used it, compared to 23 percent saying they used Microsoft Office 365.

a majority of educators (more than 60 percent) said the purpose of adopting education technology was to increase student productivity and efficiency. Their key educational priorities for 2017-18 are “to improve student learning and outcomes” (88 percent), and to “better leverage available time and motivate students” (71 percent).

Educators saw the top ed tech trends in the next school year as:

  • Digital platforms for teaching, learning and assessment;
  • Personalized learning;
  • Computational thinking, coding and robotics;
  • Increased understanding of data; and
  • Gamificiation.

Some other key findings in the report include:

  • A majority of U.S. public school educators surveyed said they are challenged with budget restraints and lack of resources when it comes to implementing education technology;
  • A majority of U.S. private school educators said they lack training to understand or adopt new technology;
  • Many public and private school educators said they saw the adoption of “technology for the sake of technology” as a challenge;
  • Educators in California struggle with lack of training and “technology for the sake of technology,” while teachers in Texas struggle with bureaucracy, budget constraints and a lack of resources.

The complete report can be read on the Kahoot! website here. Kahoot! will be at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference

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Milwaukee Public Schools to Receive Hotspots, Tablets, Smartphones from Sprint

By Sri Ravipati 06/19/17

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/06/19/milwaukee-public-schools-to-receive-hotspots-tablets-smartphones-from-sprint.aspx

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), will be receiving some tech handouts from Sprint for the 2017-2018 school year. As part of the company’s 1Million Project — which aims to deliver high-speed internet access to 1 million high school students nationwide — more than 2,500 students at 25 MPS high schools will each receive either a hotspot device, tablet or smartphone.

MPS students will be receiving devices that come with 3GB of high-speed LTE data (with unlimited data available at 2G speeds if usage exceeds that amount). Students can keep their device up to four years while they are in high school no cost, according to initiative site. Additionally, devices are equipped with filters to block adult content that cannot be disabled and are Free Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) compliant.

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more about mobile devices in education in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mobile+devices

Susan Grajek at Bryan Alexander on IT and education

Susan Grajek at Bryan Alexander on IT and education

Forum takes a deep dive into higher education and technology. On Thursday, March 23rd, from 2-3 pm EST we will be joined by Susan Grajek, the vice president for communities and research at EDUCAUSE

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Top 10 IT Issues, 2017: Foundations for Student Success

New Classrooms’ Interactive Math

New Classrooms’ Interactive Math Expands to 10 States

By Richard Chang08/16/16

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/16/new-classrooms-interactive-math-expands-to-10-states.aspx

New Classrooms, a nonprofit geared toward personalizing education in schools, is expanding its “Teach to One: Math” model to 13,000 students at 40 schools in 10 states and the District of Columbia

According to New Classrooms, Teach to One (TTO) modernizes the predominant, century-old model of one teacher to 25 or more students teaching from one textbook to a personalized learning experience for every student

To learn more about New Classrooms and its TTO model, visit the company’s website.

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more on technology and math teaching in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=math

online discussion with Plovdiv University

April 21, 2016

Culture and Education

Adobe Connect Recording http://scsuconnect.stcloudstate.edu/p53yxcavsih/

online discussions with faculty from School of Education at St. Cloud State University, faculty and students from Plovdiv University and faculty from New Bulgarian University.

http://www.stcloudstate.edu/sped/faculty-staff.aspx
John Hoover: jhhoover@stcloudstate.edu – SCSU
Martin Lo: hlo@stcloudstate.edu – SCSU

Kyounghee Seo: kseo@stcloudstate.edu – SCSU

Galin Tzokov: g_tzokov@mail.bg, Gal.tzokov@gmail.com g – Plovdiv

zlaty.sh@gmail.comg – Plovdiv

Vladimira Angelova: vladiang@abv.bg – Plovdiv

Ludmil Duridanov : duridanov@gmail.com – NBU

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community based learning, project based learning, personalized learning

Adobe Connect link: http://scsuconnect.stcloudstate.edu/ims/
Adobe Connect Recording from the December 10, 8AM (4PM local time in Bulgaria) with students and faculty from Plovdiv University and practitioners from K12 school in Plovdiv: http://scsuconnect.stcloudstate.edu/p20nzpx5g02/

online discussion with faculty, pre-service teachers and K12 teachers on the definitions and connection among these types of learning. Please share your questions and observations in the the comment section under the blog entry.

обучение в общности (community based learning), обучение базирано на проекти 9 project based learning ) и индивидуално обучение (personalized learning)

за краткото време от един час, ще се дискутираме дефинициите и връзката между три вида обучение, които са обект на внимание като част от реформата в американското обучение. Моля споделете мненията си и въпросите си в секцията за коментарии под блога

Constructivism: Lecture and project-based learning

10 Tips for Assessing Project-Based Learning

Inquiry Learning

Community-Based Learning (CBL)

CBL

CBL

http://www.swarthmore.edu/lang-center-civic-social-responsibility/community-based-learning-cbl

Community Based Learning (CBL) is a pedagogical approach that is based on the premise that the most profound learning often comes from experience that is supported by guidance, context-providing, foundational knowledge, and intellectual analysis.The opportunity for students to bring thoughtful knowledge and ideas based on personal observation and social interaction to a course’s themes and scholarly arguments brings depth to the learning experience for individuals and to the content of the course. The communities of which we are a part can benefit from the resources of our faculty and students, while the courses can be educationally transformative in powerful ways.

http://www.princeton.edu/cbli/

community based learning project based learning

community based learning project based learning

The Community-Based Learning Initiative (CBLI) connects students’ academic work with their interest in and concern for the communities around the University. Working with local nonprofits, students develop research projects, collect and analyze data, and share their results and conclusions, not just with their professors, but also with organizations and agencies that can make use of the information. Working with CBLI, students can do community-based research in courses, as a summer research internship, and as part of their junior paper or senior thesis.

Community-Based Learning

http://nationalcenterforcommunityschools.childrensaidsociety.org/sites/default/files/community-based-learning.pdf

Introduction to community based learning

http://academics.holycross.edu/files/cbl/Introduction_to_Community-Based_Learning.pdf

another form of experiential learning. Wide variation of definitions: off-campus academic learning or service learning. Field work, internships, community based research etc. connects classroom learning objectives with civic engagement.

service learning

service learning

service learning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-learning

Service-Learning must properly connect the traditional classroom experience with the real life lessons that come through service.

What is Project Based Learning (PBL)?

обучение базирано на проекти

http://bie.org/about/what_pbl

Project-based learning is a dynamic classroom approach in which students actively explore real-world problems and challenges and acquire a deeper knowledge. http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning

https://www.pinterest.com/rxinsider/experiential-learning-service-learning-experientia/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMCZvGesRz8

Project Based Learning Ideas, Lesson Plans, Examples, Templatesproject based learning

http://www.learningreviews.com/Project-Based-Learning-Lesson-Plans.html

Personalized Learning персонализирано обучение

http://edglossary.org/personalized-learning/

http://www.personalizelearning.com/

personalizelearning

personalized-learning

personalized-learning

 

student-centered learning

обучение фокусирано около студента

student-centered learning

student-centered learning

student-centered learning

Socratic method

Socratic method, also known as method of elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate, is named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates. It is a form of inquiry and discussion between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

student-centered learning socratic method

Personalized Learning

Response: Personalized Learning Is ‘a Partnership With Students’

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/09/response_personalized_learning_is_a_learning_partnership_with_students.html

building relationships with students so I can better connect lessons to their interests, hopes and dreams; providing them with many opportunities for organizational and cognitive choice; and creating situations where they can get positive, as well as critical, feedback in a supportive way from me, their classmates and themselves.

Response: Personalized Learning Is ‘Based On Relationships, Not Algorithms’

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/09/response_personalized_learning_is_based_on_relationships_not_algorithms.html

Too often, the notion of “personalized learning” means choice-based programmed rather than truly personalized. This comes from the tech world, where “personalization” is synonymous with user choice. It’s the idea of giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down on Pandora. It’s the idea of having adaptive programs that change based upon one’s personal preferences. It’s the Facebook algorithm that tells you what information is the most relevant to you. It’s about content delivery rather than user creation.

While tech companies promise personalization, they often promote independent, isolated learning. True personalization is interdependent rather than isolated. True personalization is based upon a horizontal relationship rather than a top-down customization. True personalization is based upon a deeply human relationship rather than a program or an algorithm or a set of scripts. True personalization is a mix between personal autonomy and group belonging. It’s a mix between what someone wants and what someone needs. It’s a chance to make, rather than simply a chance to consume.

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