The Dummies’ Guide to Personalized Learning

With the increasing student’s achievements and engagements, preparing students for colleges and life, across the world, reducing inequities are becoming common goals in schools. Though it is not an easy task to accomplish, many educators, administrators, experts, and researchers agree that if it is done with proper strategies, personalized learning can make a significant difference. While it has been widely recognized that personalized learning is good teaching amplified, the question is all about the implementation.

However, navigating all the related information can be challenging, and it is often hard to find exact answers.

In this guide, we are providing a curated set of information related to personalized, alongside the tools and resources which helps in implementation and sustain customized learning.

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WHAT IS PERSONALIZED LEARNING?

Personalized learning is an entirely different approach than the typical one-size-fits-all classroom model. Where a typical one-size-fit to all kind of traditional education use the standard curriculum for almost every student, personalized learning has a tailor-made solution according to the individual knowledge, skills, interests and learning styles.

The essential element in this is, it gets developed through a combined approach between students and educators and empowers learners to make decisions regarding their experience and planning for the future.

Personalized learning can be defined as a set of instructions and pace of education, which optimize the requirement of each learner and is driven by a student’s interests.

Key characteristics of personalized learning can be outlined as:

• All curriculums are developed on the interests of the student
• Learners can decide what they learn and how they learn it
• The teaching pace has adjusted according to the individual student’s learning capability and the pace of their learning.
• Technologies are being used widely to achieve the goals of personalized learning.
• It involves developing customized learning plans to reflect the interest and requirement of students by taking the help of technology.

Purpose of personalized learning

The core goal of personalized learning is to enable every student to optimize their learning experience as per their need. The ultimate goal of this learning module is to ensure each student can succeed academically. Such as if any students need any paper help, he/she can use technology to find the best helping services for their paper. It can be a challenge and inspire each student. It works on a different learning structure which builds on a module to achieve a goal to create a unique learning program that can aspire and motivate each learner.

In the traditional way of learning if we can see the ratio: one teacher is responsible for many students, and it is nearly impossible to take care of each of them individually. Additionally, when it comes to teaching a class full of students, lead to focus on the average student in the class. That eventually impacts slow and average learners behind, and they feel the leftover, bored and disengaged.

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However, with the increasing technology involvement in our daily life, it has enabled an opportunity to break through the old learning modules of having just one teacher overseeing so many students, and this personalized learning way has also motivated students to take charge of their own learning. Learners now can set their own objective with educators and only work on those projects which ponder their interests and learning style. Plus, ongoing one-on-one meetings between teachers and students help them to understand their approach, track progress, address any specific issues and can create new learning goals.

How Personalized Learning Actually Works?

As the personalized learning approach is so individualized, the daily classroom routine in a school using this learning module is quite different from the traditional one. It has also been noticed that classrooms are now also adopting the personalized learning approach for delivering lectures. It gives freedom to the learners to explore and set their own individual lesson programs and learn in a way that is most suited to them. It just not only allows them to learn with similar interests; it makes them learn valuable communication, cooperation and leadership skills. 

Look at the Benefits of Personalized Learning

A personalized learning approach benefits both students and educators and provides them with a tailored learning experience. It allows students to pursue their interests at their own comfort zone and pace and empowering teachers to focus on guidance, support and longer-term planning.

Here we are sharing some of the benefits of adopting a personalized learning approach:

• Allow students to master in subject of their interests: When students get access to learn at their own place and own pace, in such a way that is best suited to their style of learning, they tend to focus on their every curriculum. Where in a traditional classroom, educators focus on teaching each module with a specifically defined pace, most of the students feel left behind. Personalized learning pace helps them to absorb the material and ultimately master the subject properly.
• Cultivate Soft Skills: Beyond traditional subjects such as math, science, English, history, personalized learning teaches crucial skills, which makes students future-ready. It also helps in developing and teaching soft skills such as understanding, creativity, intelligence and collaboration. This skill plays a vital role in preparing students for an uncertain future.
• Better time management and utilization: By leveraging the uses of technology, personalized learning saves time on administrative tasks and allows educators to focus on supporting students in their individual knowledge and troubleshooting. Plus, it can help in cutting down on educators’ marking time. It involves the complete curriculum activities, including classroom learning to projects and assessments, and permits educators to work one-on-one with students. It also supports parents to have a deep and clear insight into how their kids are doing in school. They can check for the upcoming assessments and their child’s progress by checking recent grades.
• Enhanced Collaboration: As students and educators both work together to set learning plans and goals, it helps them to understand each other better. It just does not meet the needs of the student and the provisions of the academic curriculum; it encourages them to work closely with their peers to share information along with informal knowledge sharing.
• Students community: It empowers students to make strategies for their future, which ultimately lead them to concentrate in the classroom. Students find and explore the relevant learning modules and discover different ways of learning. Also, it pushes them to go through self-guided learning and work closely with their companions to share skills, knowledge and shared interests.
• Improve Academic Performance: The most significant benefit of having personalized learning is, it boosts academic success rates. It built a strong relationship between educators and students and allowed students to learn at their own pace, and it stimulates students to pursue their interests. Personalized learning has completely taken this new learning module to the next logical step.

Importantly, there is no particular form of technology that can make for ideal personalized learning, instead a variety of tools are helping students in learning in a variety of ways.

Conclusion

During personalized learning, educators need to acknowledge their students and have supporting tools. The curriculum must be tailored to appeal to each student in the class. Group activities and projects help in engaging learners and appeal to them, though it needs to recognize what activities they feel best match their learning style.