As Phil and I have been saying all along—most recently in my last post, which mentioned ECC’s use of adaptive learning—the software is, at best, an enabler. It’s the work that the students and teachers do around the software that makes the difference. Or not. In ECC’s case, they are trying to implement a pretty radical change in pedagogy with an at-risk population. It’s worth digging into the details.
Curricular-Materials
This category includes digital curricular materials, including adaptive learning, assessments, OER, etc., as well as the vendors who sell them.
The Fraught Interaction Design of Personalized Learning Products
David Wiley has a really interesting post up about Lumen Learning’s new personalized learning platform. Here’s an excerpt: A typical high-level approach to personalization might include: building up an internal model of what a student knows and can do, algorithmically interrogating that model, and providing the learner with a unique set of learning experiences based […]
Release of University of California at Davis Case Study on e-Literate TV
Today we are thrilled to release the fifth and final case study in our new e-Literate TV series on “personalized learning”. In this series, we examine how that term, which is heavily marketed but poorly defined, is implemented on the ground at a variety of colleges and universities. We plan to cap off this series with two analysis […]
Promising Research Results On Specific Forms Of Adaptive Learning / ITS
Recently I described an unpublished study by Dragan Gasevic and team on the use of Knowillage / LeaP adaptive platform. ((When the study started Knowillage was an independent company; mid-way through study D2L bought Knowillage and renamed product as LeaP.)) The context of article was on D2L’s misuse of the results, but the study itself […]
The Importance Of Student Control Of Learning, Especially For Working Adults
When giving keynotes at conferences over the past two years, I have observed that some of the best non-verbal feedback occurs when pointing out that personalized and adaptive learning does not equal black-box algorithms choosing content for students. Yes, there are plenty of approaches pitching that solution (Knewton in its early state being the best-known if not […]
ASU Is No Longer Using Khan Academy In Developmental Math Program
In these two episodes of e-Literate TV, we shared how Arizona State University (ASU) started using Khan Academy as the software platform for a redesigned developmental math course ((The terms remedial math and developmental math are interchangeable in this context.)) (MAT 110). The program was designed in Summer 2014 and ran through Fall 2014 and Spring […]
Instructor Replacement vs. Instructor Role Change
Two weeks ago I wrote a post about faculty members’ perspective on student-centered pacing within a course. What about the changing role of faculty members – how do their lives change with some of the personalized learning approaches?