The Future Of Learning? Well, It’s Personal
November 19, 2018 | By Anya Kamenetz, Kyla Calvert Mason and Robbie Feinberg
WCER researcher Rich Halverson shares his take on indvidualized or personalized learning and the opportunities technology offers in an article published by National Public Radio.
Summing up the broad world of individualized learning is difficult, Halverson tells NPR. He has spent the last few years traveling around the country to see personalized learning in action at public schools. "What schools call personalized varies considerably," he says, and "a lot of schools are doing personalized learning, but don't call it that."
Common elements at the schools he's studied include students meeting regularly one on one with teachers. They set individual learning goals, follow up and discuss progress. All of this may be recorded using some simple software, like a shared Google Doc, for every student, NPR reports.
This process sounds simple, but face-to-face interaction is "expensive," says Halverson. Twenty-eight meetings of 15 minutes each equals a full day of a teacher's time, and the entire school day, week, year may need to be reconfigured to allow for it. Some schools Halverson has studied, especially charter schools with more freedom, have remade the curriculum to emphasize group projects and presentations, where students can prove the necessary knowledge and skills while pursuing topics that interest them. Students are grouped by ability and interest, not age, and may change groups from subject to subject or day to day. Scheduling and staffing is necessarily fluid; even the building may need to be reconfigured for maximum flexibility.
