Knowledge
How technology is changing the face of education?
Technology has resulted in 3 new styles of learning in classrooms— personalization, differentiation and individualization. The cost of introducing these in the classrooms is progressively decreasing along with increasing learning outcomes.
All spheres of life touched by mobile, internet or personal technology has literally metamorphosed and given incredible outcomes. Take the example of ticketing, online shopping and many other examples. The list is almost endless where technology has enabled mass personalization.
No other country has embraced mobile, the internet and the concept of connected technology like the USA, needless to say technology is now knocking on the doors of education. This has resulted in the advent of new learning styles or what are popularly called “neomillennial“ styles. Such styles have now gained enough momentum to be formally categorized under 3 categories — personalization, differentiation and individualization.
The U.S. Department of Education’s 2010 Education Technology Plan defines the 3 types as — personalization is when the lessons are tailored to learning preferences an individual learner, differentiation means tailoring the content to the learning preferences of groups of learners and finally individualization is when instruction is paced to the learning needs of different learners.
While differentiation and individualization has always existed in school systems to meet students’ learning needs and goals, technology offers a much wider scope for personalization, whereby, each individual’s intent, interest and learning profile are targeted through identification of content, process and product. Such personalisation in education allows students to completely own their learning process as they can choose their learning objectives as well as the pace of learning.
Prima facie, it might seem that designing and integrating personalisation in K-12 education may be expensive, it surprisingly isn’t so. In 2010, a survey instituted by the Greaves Group showed that an investment of $298 per student per year on migrating from a regular classroom to a 1-to-1classroom results in a potential savings of more than $400 per student per year.
Ideally, in personalized learning, students should be able to work from outside the school at the hours of their convenience, either individually, through a collaborative effort and be free to communicate with peers and teachers. This assumes availability of expanded internet/device access. Here the schools will have to step in and use their purchasing power to negotiate lower-cost licenses and contracts for digital content and online courses that students can access from their homes. Alternately, the simpler way out could be that the schools can extend the school hours.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of individualization of education through technology is for the at-risk children. Augmented Reality can make it possible to design interactive programs that allow students to see and explore concepts from different angles. Indeed, a research of at-risk high school students in Texas showed that interactive environments helped in better assimilation of content than traditional means like lecture, note taking, drill and practice. However, the research also pointed out the importance of blending instruction with technology that allow students to solve problems on their own or collaboratively with other students.
The success of the marriage of technology and education depends on effective leadership at all levels of society. Teachers, administrators, parents, students and educational policy makers must work together on a range of tools to optimize school operations and decide budgetary allocations for introducing technology in schools. Most importantly, all stakeholders must recognize that personalization of education is making the whole learning experience more efficient and effective with teachers and not without them.