Adaptive Learning Technology
Welcome to this Open Educational Resource (OER) on Adaptive Learning Technology (ALT). We are thrilled you are able to join us! We will start with a brief overview of Adaptive Learning Technology (ALT) and then have you explore particular ALTs that are particularly relevant to your interests and profession. There are two activities that you are responsible for completing in this OER. You will begin by completing a short survey to help us better understand your level of prior experience or exposure to ALT. Your more substantial task will be to evaluate a few examples of ALT and contribute meaningfully to the discussion forum.
Suggested Timeline:
By Monday: Read through the following introduction to ALT and complete the survey below.
By Wednesday: Familiarize yourself with the Cube evaluation of ALT.
By Friday: Post to one of the three discussion forums (Padlet).
By Saturday: Respond to at least two posts made by other visitors.
What is Adaptive Learning Technology?
Almost every teacher and educator has struggled at some point or other with delivering content in a way that best meets the needs of each and every one of their students. Often times, educators resort to “teaching to the middle” and struggle to find opportunities to support students who lie at either extreme of the bell curve. Recent decades have seen an enormous growth in computational learning environments that endeavour to solve this particular issue in education by offering personalized and adaptive learning systems. These learning technology feed student assessment and feedback into a complex algorithm to determine an appropriate scope and sequence of learning activities to maximize learning for each individual student. In essence, “the system learns from students interactions and then adjust the path and pace of learning” (Mokal et. al, 2017). In effect, adaptive learning technologies redefine the teacher’s role from content provider to learning facilitator and puts students directly in the driver’s seat of their learning pathway.
Advantages to ALT
ALT offers several benefits to students, teachers, administrator and other stakeholders within a learning environment.
For students, ALT:
- Respects the unique set of prior knowledge of each student
- Dynamically adjusts sequence of instruction and assessment to best meet the individual learning needs of individual students in a timely manner
- Aims to reduce gaps in understanding and cognitive overload
- Engages learners by incorporating a variety of content including video, text and simulations
For educators, ALT:
- Supports principles of active learning and facilitates blended learning
- Affords easy monitoring of student progress which allows for intervention before students become overwhelmed or bored
- Instruction is carefully designed to maximize learning
- Reduces cheating as students receive individualized assessment
For administrators and other stakeholders, ALT:
- Offers large data sets and provides insight into student performance at the school or district level which can help inform decision making regarding educational policy
- May be easier to budget as opposed to other resources, such as textbooks, that require substantial initial financial investment
Concerns with ALT
While ALT appears to be an effective way to bring individualized learning to a large number of students, there are several concerns and limitations to this technology worth noting. While ALT may lend itself to the learning of factual and procedural knowledge, it may prove less effective with higher order thinking and complex tasks such as critical and creative thinking and communication skills. ALT also demands that teachers carefully map curricular objectives to the particular content resources available. Additionally, teachers are generally not provided insight into the how each particular algorithm specifically adapts each lesson to maximize learning for each student. As a result, teachers are unable to evaluate how well the learning system is adapting content for each learner. While ALT is often touted as being more cost effective than personal tutoring, the majority of ALT is not free for use. As such, ALT may be cost-prohibitive for some users.
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