Over the past few decades, the profile of the typical student has changed dramatically. Education needs to evolve as well. Members of today’s new student majority—including students from low-income backgrounds, first-generation college-goers, students over the age of twenty-five, and students of different racial background—demand a learning environment that is more personalised. That is, they require learning that is more specific to their individual needs and goals.
Fortunately, technology provides educators and administrators with tools that can tailor the learning experience to the individual, help at-risk students master core skills, and develop guided pathways that assess students’ progress toward graduation and suggest interventions if challenges arise along the way. Although much must be done in order to implement the needed changes for personalised learning, the vision and evidence for unlocking student success drives us forward.
What is Personalised Learning?
Rather than trying to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to education, personalised learning offers students an individualised approach that is specific to their preexisting knowledge, learning needs, and goals. Students learn best when their education is targeted and tailored to them. Examples of personalised learning activities that have been demonstrated to improve student outcomes include:
- adapting the scope of instruction based on assessments of students’ existing knowledge, skills, and gaps;
- using personalised hints or prompts that support students during learning activities or assessment items;
- prompting learners to generate explanations of how they have approached an activity (e.g., “show work”);
- employing algorithms that adapt the presentation of content based on relevance to learners’ goals; and
- adapting the complexity or presentation of content based on a student’s learning.
Research shows that powerful new teaching, learning, and advising tools can help advisors and educators to be more personalised in how they instruct and advise students. A personalised learning approach and environment can engage students and provide timely feedback and robust student supports. This higher-quality teaching and advising can result in greater retention and in higher rates of program completion.
So, what is a “Good” Personalised Learning?
Imagine that students everywhere are able to receive the most effective adaptive instruction at a reasonable price, using technologies and resources that tailor the learning to the individual. What if all of higher education had a strong culture of continuous innovation focused on adaptive learning experiences responsive to individual learners’ goals? What if new, innovative tools could make personalised education not only effective in terms of learning outcomes but also economically feasible?
Imagine that remedial and general education programs are personalised to suit the prior knowledge, skills, and personal interests of each student. In place of large, anonymous lecture classes where many first-generation and low-income students struggle, students could instead participate in interactive, blended courses where they would have access to continuously improving content, adaptive simulations, problem sets, and assessments.
Imagine that instead of an emphasis on lectures, the entire higher education system devotes time and attention to helping students achieve fluency and mastery through greater one-on-one tutoring, targeted group instruction, peer support, and other resources. In such an environment, students could take ownership of their learning and achieve mastery at their own pace.
Imagine that compelling personalisation tools and advising applications are readily available to all students so that they can track their progress and achieve their individual goals. These tools would serve as personalised maps that motivate and guide students along every juncture of their postsecondary educational experience. Advisors and faculty would also use these tools to see where students are struggling and where they are succeeding, allowing the advisors to make real-time adjustments, deploy critical learning interventions, and apply increased or different supports based on the needs of each student.
EDUMAAT provides the platform for realising this for all students.
TIME IS NOW
With more than 40% school goers dropping out before finishing, we can’t afford to stand by and do nothing. Swift and meaningful changes must be made to the outdated design of the education system in order to create the flexible and personalised learning environment needed by today’s student majority.
Benjamin Franklin is said to have observed: “Tell me and I forget; teach me and I remember; involve me and I learn.” Personalised learning involves students in their own growth and encourages them to take ownership of their learning. The structured, individualised, and supported approach helps them see a clear and guided pathway to academic and career success.
Bringing personalised learning solutions to the broader Indian education system will require major system changes and buy-in from colleges and universities around the nation. We have no time to waste in unlocking student success. Students deserve the environment and supports that will help them reach their full potential and earn their higher education certificate or degree.
How EDUMAAT can Help
EDUMAAT provides such a learning environment for the students, by helping them to see who they are and how they are performing and what they need to do to perform better. It also offers the institution platform to integrate their class rooms environment with the digital environment so that learning for the student does not stop once he comes out of the lecture hall.
EDUMAAT offers the much required learning enabled collaboration platform that helps the student in their learning process and involves the educators and advisors in getting a better hold on their content and the delivery process. The educators can dynamically change the way they deliver the lecture, classes and their material designs.
EDUMAAT as an ERP platform for the institution also helps the institution in collecting the data on the student learning curve, performance of the educators and advisors, performance of the learning infrastructure etc with the help of
Erp Software for Schools that will enable them for the smooth operation of the institute. Further it also enables the institute for providing a perfect environment where the students can achieve their goal for knowledge, learning and career.
Come Together We’ll Enable our Youth to Imagine and Achieve Greatness.
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