Today we are thrilled to release the initial episodes 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. What does it really mean in practice? What problem is intended to solve? And how well is it working?
We have initially released case studies of approximately 30 minutes each from two very different schools – Middlebury College and Essex County College. You can see all the episodes (either 2 or 3 per case study) at the series link, and you can access individual episodes below.
- Middlebury Case Study: Personalization through Small Class Sizes
- Middlebury Case Study: Approaches Based on How Students Learn
- Middlebury Case Study: A Conversation With Students and Faculty, Together
- Essex Case Study: Self-Regulated Learning and A Change In Approach
- Essex Case Study: Student and Faculty View of Course Redesign
e-Literate TV, owned and run by MindWires Consulting, is funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. When we first talked about the series with the Gates Foundation, they agreed to give us the editorial independence to report what we find, whether it is good, bad, or indifferent.
As with the previous series, we are working in collaboration with In the Telling, our partners providing the platform and video production. Their Telling Story platform allows people to choose their level of engagement, from just watching the video to accessing synchronized transcripts and accessing transmedia. We have added content directly to the timeline of each video, bringing up further references, like e-Literate blog posts or relevant scholarly articles, in context. With In The Telling’s help, we are crafting episodes that we hope will be appealing and informative to those faculty, presidents, provosts, and other important college and university stakeholders who are not ed tech junkies.
We will release three more case studies over the next month or two, and we also have two episodes discussing the common themes we observed on the campuses. We welcome your feedback, either in comments or on Twitter using the hashtag #eLiterateTV.
Enjoy!