Learning Approach: Personalized Learning

For this week in learning approaches, I decided to take an in-depth look at personalized learning. Since I plan on becoming a teacher in the near future, I wanted to choose a learning approach that I thought would benefit me the most! Personalized learning takes a look at the specific ways in which students learn so that teachers can implement them within schools to maximize academic success!

The official definition of personalized learning from the U.S. Department of Education is “instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner. Learning objectives, instructional approaches, and content all may vary based on learner needs. In addition, learning activities are meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their interests, and often self-initiated.”

Here is a Youtube video that also gives a good description of the practice of personalized learning!

There are a number of different ways in which a student can learn, and finding and incorporating those modalities can prove to be a difficult task! However, effectively utilizing personalized learning can bring about a lot more benefits as opposed to its costs!

What might a classroom look and sound like when a teacher uses this approach? Depending upon which specific route an educator chooses to take, a given classroom that incorporates personalized learning might look more inviting, visually appealing, and a tad bit crazy! Every student is different, and recognizing diversity in the classroom might make the environment a little more “eye-catching”!

A typical classroom that involves personalized learning could look something like this!

As far as sounds go, it could vary widely as well. Some classes might like it quiet so as to focus on the tasks at hand while others prefer engagement and hands-on activities! It all just depends on what suits that particular class the best!

With the personalized learning approach, it is difficult to distinguish what the students should typically be doing without taking a look at a specific class. This method involves differentiation, which means adjusting instruction to meet the individual needs of students. So as far as concrete guidelines go, personalized learning does not have much to offer. How time is spent, how classrooms are organized, and how the teachers educate their students all depends on the individual abilities, needs, and interests of those students!

There are a few disadvantages that are associated with this approach. The initial time and energy that it requires to build a solid personalized learning foundation is substantial. Finding and figuring out which ways each student learns most effectively can prove to be a daunting task! Then determining the specific methods of instruction that you want to incorporate into the classroom to get the most out of the students is the next challenge.

Once these steps are executed, and teachers gain more and more experience over time, personalized learning is proven to pay dividends. Our students should come first! Taking into consideration their wants, needs, talents, and interests should be at the top of our lists!

Three excellent accounts to follow on Twitter to learn and investigate more on personalized learning are @PeteSiner,@allison_zmuda, and @SPPS_PL!

For more quality information on this topic, take a look at the website below! It provides an in-depth look at what personalized learning is, how it works, and how to apply it into our classrooms!

https://www.edelements.com/personalized-learning