Personalized Learning

I found Richard Culatta’s Ted Talk about reimagining learning, inspiring. He talks about closing the digital divide and how to use technology to transform student-learning experiences, rather than just digitizing traditional learning tools. Culatta’s suggests three ways to help close the digital divide, personalized learning, collaborative problem solving and immediate feedback. Out of the three suggestions, I find myself wanting to dig deeper into personalized learning. Therefore, I found two articles about personalized learning research, to deepen my understanding of personalized learning.

The first article I read was A Step-by-Step Guide to Personalized Learning by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey. As the title suggests this a six-step guide to personalize learning. Bray and McClaskey present three variations of a personalized learning environment; stage one is teacher centered with learner voice and choice, stage two is learner-centered with teacher and learners as co-designers and stage three is learner-driven with teacher as partner in learning (14-15). Their six-step guide focuses on a stage one environment. The six steps are: 1. Understand who your learners are and how they learn best, 2. Design a stage one personalized learning environment, 3. Develop a universally designed lesson, 4. Facilitate driving and supporting questions, 5. Choose tools, resources and strategies for learning and teaching, 6. Use assessment as learning. For each step, Bray and McClaskey give examples of how this would be implemented, by following a third grade student who is interested in recycling. While I found this article interesting, and affirming to some ideas, I already had, I wish that it had gone deeper in what a stage three environment would look like. In my opinion, a stage three environment would be the goal of personalized learning.

The second article I read was Individual differences in online personalized learning environment, by Norazrena Abu Samah, Noraffandy Yahaya and Mohamad Bilal Ali. In this article, the authors describe the benefits of personalized learning, the factors to consider about the learner and how to use online interactive based learning modes to create a personalized learning environment for the learner. When thinking about your learners, you need to consider the whole person. According to Samah et al. (2011), the whole person is the cognitive, emotion, intention and social aspects of the learners. When personalizing learning, using the whole person strategy will deeply engage and motivate the learner. When designing an online personalized learning environment, it is suggested that it be interactive and personalized for the learner. It is a space where the learning can record their learning, track goals, receive feedback, and experience relevant learning based on their interests.

When reflecting on the two articles, I found them both to be interesting and learned more about personalized learning. However, I found the Samah et al. article to be more in line with Culatta’s Ted Talk on reimagining learning. Culatta spoke about personalized learning providing immediate feedback, the learner sets the pace of learning, the students decided on how they are learning and technology is a tool that is used to allow the student to become a learner. One thing that all three had in common is the use of the word learner, not student. Bray and McClaskey (2013) define a learner as someone who drives their own learning from anywhere anytime, whereas, as student is a person in a class being taught by a teacher. Bray and McClaskey’s step-by-step guide is a great starting point and discusses the many factors of personalized learning, I did not make as many connections to Culatta’s talk, mainly, because of the lack of technology integration.

Throughout the video and the readings, I was able to make many connections to initiatives being used in my school. For example, our classroom teachers are having their students create WIGs (Wildly, Important Goals). The students are in charge of, not only, writing their goal, but they are in charge of tracking their progress on their goal and reflecting on their learning towards the goal. We also use Thinking Maps, to make our thinking visible, to allow student ownership over their thoughts and thought process. Recently, I attended the Michigan Art Education Association’s annual fall conference, where there was a focus on Teaching for Artistic Behaviors (TAB). TAB is a choice based arts approach, where the focus is on artistic behavior (the process) and not so much on the finished product. The TAB pedagogy, in my opinion, is personalized learning for the art studio. Currently, I do a Project Based Learning unit with my fourth graders, which does give students voice and choice, an element of personalized learning, which I feel as though is a good stepping stone into personalized learning.

In conclusion, I have a deeper understanding of personalized learning, however, I feel like there is more I would like to learn. Through the video and readings, the examples of using technology to guide personalized learning, were with older learners. I currently teach k-4 elementary art, I would like to know how I could use technology to transform learning in the elementary art studio to create a personalized learning environment. An elementary TAB program seems to be the most appropriate route to introduce personalized learning into the art program. In addition, visual art education is a natural makerspace. However, through personalized learning, learners can experience maker education through a personalized approach. Making projects that express their interests, engaging and motivating their learning, and transforming their learning environment. Through this research, I am excited to start transforming my traditional elementary art studio into a personalized art-learning environment.

 

Sources

Bray, B., & McClaskey, K. (2013). A Step-by-Step Guide to Personalize Learning. Learning & Leading with Technology, 40(7), 12-19. Retrieved November 5, 2016, from http://ezproxy.msu.edu.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/docview/1509085866?accountid=12598

Culatta, R. (Director). (2013, January 10). Reimagining Learning: Richard Culatta at TEDxBeaconStreet [Video file]. In TEDx. Retrieved November 04, 2016, from http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Reimagining-Learning-Richard-Cu

Samah, N. A., Yahaya, N., & Abu, M. B. (2011, July). Individual differences in online personalized learning environment. Educational Research and Reviews, 6(7), 516-521. Retrieved November 05, 2016, from http://ezproxy.msu.edu.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/docview/1657313561?accountid=12598