Giving Compass' Take:

• The Learning Accelerator conducted research to understand the challenges facing leaders scaling blended and personalized learning and found seven essential questions leaders must answer in order to move forward.

• How can philanthropy help to scale personalized learning efforts?

• Learn more about personalized learning. 

The Learning Accelerator has recently completed a 10-month study to better understand the core challenges facing system leaders scaling blended and personalized learning innovations.

Based on this research we discovered that, while there is no one right pathway to implementing blended or personalized learning, systems do seem to face a consistent set of implementation challenges, regardless of context. In a white paper entitled Look Both Ways, we have articulated seven of them as a series of questions that navigate competing priorities:

  1. How do we decide what the district should hold tight vs. loose? (Centralized vs. Decentralized Implementation)
  2. How fast should we be moving from pilot to scale? How can we achieve sustainability? (“Fast and Furious” vs. “Slow and Steady”)
  3. How do we decide where to pilot and how to allocate resources to schools? (Prioritize Need vs. Prioritize Readiness)
  4. How should we develop our talent and resource pipeline? (Build Internally vs. Buy Externally)
  5. How flexible should our district strategy be over time? (Fixed Strategy vs. Adapt with Experience)
  6. Should we scale a comprehensive model throughout our system or provide access to a series of independent, modular resources or tools? (“Prix Fixe” vs. “A-la-Carte”)
  7. How might practitioners best learn from one another? What should we be cataloguing and sharing throughout the district? (Share Best Practices vs. Share Process/Failures)

Read the full article about scaling personalized learning by Ellie Avishai and Beth Rabbitt The Learning Accelerator.