Giving Compass' Take:

• Setting aside time to provide authentic and meaningful feedback to each student and be able to individualize the learning materials is critical for student success. Rachelle Dene Poth at Getting Smart writes how and why such personalized learning is beneficial. 

• What are potential challenges when shifting away from traditional learning to personalized learning? 

• Here's how teachers and leaders can promote personalized learning. 

An important theme in education today is “how can we best personalize the learning experiences for our students?” There is a shift from teacher-centered to creating a student-centered and optimally, a student-driven classroom, where students have choices in the pace, tools, learning objectives and based on their interests.

There are many benefits to personalized learning, especially through promoting student voice and choice, a flexible learning pace, and the ability to learn anytime, from anywhere. Knowing how to find the most beneficial resources that will empower students to develop their skills in the content area, and have their respective needs met to go about doing this can be a challenge when considering the typical class period length and number of students taught per class.

When I got started with personalized learning, it was because I wanted to do more than have all students completing the same activities each day. I wanted to encourage students to self-assess and choose their own learning paths.

I started to see a decrease in student engagement and realized that having all students do the same thing was not meeting each student’s needs. I thought that providing different activities would lead to a more “personalized ” experience for each student. However, I realized that while some activities were beneficial, simply having students engage in these activities lacked in true accountability.

Read the full article on how and why personalized learning is helpful by Rachelle Dene Poth at Getting Smart.