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Why We Need to Focus on Personalized Learning
InOctober, I facilitated a Morning Buzz session about personalized learning at DevLearn 2017 Conference & Expoin Las Vegas. I have written about the topic before,and it has been on my mind lately. In eLearning, we tend to make one-size-fits-allcourses. We don’t tailor the content to give individual learners options toexplore topics they are unfamiliar with, and to advance if they already know atopic. We need to get past this one-size-fits-all eLearning and look at ways tocreate tailored digital experiences for our learners. We need to focus onpersonalized learning.
Ispeak from personal experience. I struggled with math in college, often feelinglike the teacher was five steps ahead of me. This was not the fault of theteacher, who was trying to deliver the same experience to all 30 students—but notall of us were at the same level. Contrast that with a tutor, who assesses a student’sknowledge and then tailors the lessons to that learner’s needs. This is wheredigital learning could (and honestly should) be.
Ifocused my DevLearn Morning Buzz session around three basic questions:
- What is personalized learning?
- Why should we care?
- How can we start doing it?
Theinformal conversation yielded lively discussion. I will share some of thehighlights with you.
What is personalized learning?
Custom learning paths: Allow learners to createtheir own career learning paths. What topics do they want to learn about? Whatrole(s) in the company do they want to strive for? Can we help curate—or haveothers already in those positions curate—paths that would help them get there?
Starting from a learner’scurrent knowledge base: Instead of making assumptions about what learners know (orshould know), let’s instead focus on creating training options that allow usersto dive deep into areas they are foggy on.
Assessments: Part of personalizedlearning could include some kind of opt-out quiz or assessment that evaluateswhere the learner’s knowledge is currently, and tailors an experience to that.
Diagnosis leads to dynamic learning:I loved thesimplicity of this concept. There are two important elements to personalizinglearning. First, see where your learner is at—then, dynamically create contentbased on that diagnosis. This reminds me of a doctor prescribing a solutionbased on symptoms.
Curated content: David Kelly, executivevice president of The eLearning Guild, talks about this a lot. I think there is greatpower in having an expert (defined as someone who has already traveled thepath) suggest to others how to travel the same path.
User’s learning history: xAPI can track a user’slearning history, providing greater detail than SCORM ever could. It allows usto customize a course based on what the user has done or not done.
Invisible: Not all learning happenson an LMS. Personalized learning must be where the learner is at, when he orshe needs it. So we need to get into the places where our learners are and wherelearning happens in order to truly tailor the experience.
Why should we care?
Increase learner engagement: If users can understandthe why, they will be more engaged in the content. Seeing how the contentapplies to them will help them retain it.
Positive experience: We all know the course thateveryone complains about—the one that is hours long and contains non-relevantcontent. Such experiences give eLearning a bad name. If content is relevant anduseful, the user will have a positive experience and word will spread.
Relevant content: Users care more whencontent is relevant. Concepts like just-in-time learning and better performancesupport apply here.
Competency-based: I love the idea of notonly testing for competency, but adjusting the training to the competency ofthe user. Meet the learner at his or her current level of knowledge. (If I hadsomething like this for math in college, I wouldn’t have struggled so much.)
Buy-in and feeling ofbelonging in the company: One of the best examples I saw of this at DevLearn was withVisa University. They have a tool that allowsany user to create a learning path. Others can enroll in the learning path andeven vote on the usefulness of it. As the path is shared across theorganization, that individual gets rewarded with points and exposure to uppermanagement. It is a way for someone to stand out and really own learning.
How can we start doing it?
xAPI: A lot of what we need topersonalize learning can be done with xAPI; we just need to embrace and startusing it. With xAPI, you can get specific details about learning behavior and query(or ask via code) what the learner has done. Based on the results, you canadapt or change your content. Think of this like Amazon recommendations. Amazontracks your browsing and purchase history in order to personalizerecommendations for you.
Boosters: Art Kohn talks about boosters. These are short, simplequestions sent out at certain intervals to help the learner remember what theylearned. The repetition helps with retention. The book Make it Stick (by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and MarkA. McDaniel) talks about similar concepts.
Large, medium, and small-sectionedcourses: Beforeyou click Play, one company asks a couple of questions about what you arelooking for. Based on your answers, it shows you the longer versions of thetopics you are interested in and shorter versions of the topics you are notinterested in. Although this is a marketing tool, it can also be used topersonalize learning. What if you built small, medium, and large sections for eachtopic? Then, based on the quiz results, you can adapt the course to navigate toeach relevant section. This way, the learner can dive deeper into the section(s)relevant to them.
Explain the why: Often, we don’t explainwhy something is relevant or how it could benefit the user. I think of mydaughter when she was younger. If we sat her down and explained our decision,she would buy into it and be OK. But if we just said, “Because I said so,” shewould throw a fit. If learners know the why, the how makes more sense.
Component-based reusablelearning: Melissa Milloway often talks about this, and I think it is something worthexploring. A popular concept in web development is to make items component-based.This means you make parts of a website reusable so that the same components canbe used in several locations. When you update it in one location, it updateseverywhere.
Marketing analytics can also be used to customizea web page with personalized components relevant to that user. For example: IfI have searched in the past for superhero merchandise, it may pull in asuperhero merchandise component showing me some products I may be interested in,while another person with different interests may see something else. If wesection off our learning into components, we may be able to piece togetherpages in different ways for each learner.
