A differentiated learning concept that is continuing to evolve is Personalized Learning. Personalized Learning is defined in different ways and in some examples includes the concepts of adaptive learning. The video “ How Do You Define Personalized Learning?”, created by Educause, includes multiple definitions from various higher education learning experts. Terms that jumped out at me in the definitions included “personalized instruction,” “customized pathways,” and “individualization of learning.”

Multiple definitions of Personalized Learnig from learning experts:

The video “Ending the Classroom Factory Model: How Technology Will Personalize Education” describes personalized learning with an emphasis on adaptive learning. With the concepts presented here, there is a focus on the important role of faculty in organizing the learning experiences with well-thought out design strategies, facilitation and support for the learners.

Tom Vander Ark, in a just-published opinion piece for Education Week, describes the progress being made in the area of personalized learning. While he doesn’t describe progress exactly this way, what he lists as progress indicators are in large part due to the e-affordances described in our lessons. These include the inter-connectedness of communities and schools, new models for learning, new platforms and tools, and the ability to offer and manage micro-credentials. He shared this framework from The Learning Accelerator that shows the relationship of data use, personalization and mastery of concepts.

Framework on Personalized Learning with relationship to data use and mastery

Van Ark goes on to describe the barriers that currently exist for broader adoption of personalized learning. These include the following:

1. Narrow Framework. Most personalization is differentiation on an academic framework. We’re just beginning to understand the impact of a broader framework that considers cognitive factors and the traumatic effects of poverty. 
2. Combining formative. While most students benefit from several forms of adaptive, curriculum embedded, teacher scored and benchmark assessments, it’s still hard to combine all the formative feedback into easy to use real-time information.
3. Broader aims. We don’t yet have a common vocabulary and set of measures for social emotional learning and productive mindsets.
4. Tradition and policy. Federal and state policy (funding, assessment, accountability) and HigherEd admissions policies all reinforce traditional practices and reduce incentives for competency-based progressions
5. Technical difficulty. Developing a personalized learning school model is big design challenge; matching it with an integrated technology system? remains daunting.
6. Community engagement. Ed Leaders need new tools for agreement crafting to support piloting and scaling innovative practices.

The notion of personalized learning or personalized instruction is exciting. The e-affordances we've been learning about in this course, continued research and the broader adoption of new types of technology into learning environments will surely drive rapid change. This video from IBM titled “Personalized Learning: 5 Future Technology Predictions from IBM” describes how technology will change how education is delivered and will be the “end of the era of one-size-fits-all education.” It seems to describe opportunities for learning environments that are not only personalized but in many ways highly adaptive to the specific needs of the learner due to use of analytics. This video predicts rapid change in the direction of personalized learning in the next five years!

Cited:

Ending the Classroom Factory Model: How Technology Will Personalize Education  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMkCgSo9i4 

How do you define Personalized Learning? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJqZrV-Xsgg

Personalized Learning: 5 Future Technology Predictions from IBM  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwJc_B9_6sI

Vander Ark, T. (2016). Personalized Learning in 2016: What’s Working, What’s Missing?. Retrieved from Education Week: http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F137%2F%3Fuuid%3D60033