Personalized Learning, Empowered Learners
Reutilizing an existing product or methodology reduces the burden of human efforts, cost implications, and development time. Though adopting a generic product or following a universal method reduces the burden on the organization, its effectiveness fails to address requirements or specifications at an individual level. It’s like running a relay race, holding the baton, and passing it to the next athlete. Do you think that a generalized product can address every individual’s requirement? Will passing on a generalized method to the next generation reap the same outcomes? The obvious answer is no. Then, how come the same training courses are used and passed on to the next generation, who might face varied issues in different situations? In the modern era of eLearning, the obsolete methods of generalized training are fading away, paving the way for a newer concept: personalized eLearning.
Personalized learning is the concept of tailoring learning theories, curricula, and learning environments to meet the needs and learning styles of individual learners. Personalization differs from individualization or differentiation; personalization offers the learner a degree of choice about what is taught, when it is taught, and how it is learned.
The Gist Of Personalized eLearning
Empowering the learners to customize a variety of elements involved in online education is the key essence of personalized eLearning. In other words, the learners are allowed to set their own goals, follow their own pace, and communicate with instructors to personalize the learning process. Ideally, the learner is authorized to manage their learning and customize the experience by having direct control of the processes and provided content.
Prime Source For Personalized eLearning
The major source of eLearning personalization or personalized eLearning is the feedback from the learner, either through their actions on the system or through written suggestions. This feedback educates the eLearning developers on the expectations and requirements of the learner from that specific course or courses related to that specific concept.
Instructional Designers Role In Personalized eLearning
Instructional Designers (IDs) play a crucial role in the development and implementation of personalized eLearning experiences. Their responsibilities extend beyond traditional Instructional Design to include the customization of content, assessments, and activities to meet the unique needs and preferences of individual learners.
As per any eLearning course, multiple factors impact a learner’s ability to learn, including age, demographics, level of education, experience, and so on. However, a few key aspects to be taken into account when personalizing an eLearning experience include:
- Personalize the learner
Personalize the course to the learner by capturing their name as part of the registration process, rather than using a generic “Learner A.” - Customize the environment
The learners shall determine how the online eLearning environments look, including avatar selection to represent themselves or the voices for audio content. - Craft the content
Include content from learners’ environment and reflect learners’ browsing habits and preferences, such as blogs, social media sites, or other relevant content sources. - Customizing learning objectives
Enable learners to make the learning objectives relevant to why they are taking the course. For example, if the goal is to move from supervisor to manager, then learning objectives must reinforce that goal. - Charting own learning sequences
Learners shall chart their own learning path. Create “nonlinear” content so that they can pick and choose how they will learn. - Direct “conversation”
To make a course more personalized, using phrases such as “Now let’s click the option to discuss the topic,” rather than “Click Exit to exit the course” will be more effective. - Realize individual capability
Allowing the learner to pick the topics they need to learn, rather than forcing them to take the content they are given can benefit them by conserving their time for important knowledge. - Personalize the media
All learners are not of the same type; each follows a unique style of learning. Hence the media presented to them should also follow the learning styles preferred by the learner. - Integrate adaptive learning design
Adaptive learning principles should be integrated into the design, allowing the eLearning platform to dynamically adjust content difficulty and pace based on individual learner performance.
Final Note
Combining all the abovementioned aspects helps to create a truly personal learning environment (PLE) that will empower learners to manage and control their learning. Instructional Designers contribute significantly to the development and success of personalized eLearning experiences. Their role is not only to design effective content but also to create a learning environment that adapts to the unique needs and preferences of each learner.