Personalizing the Education Experience

This is one of my reflections from my class, Leading Change: Go Beyond Gamification with Gameful Learning.

There isn’t much personalization happening, at least in my classes. This is something that I want to work on. I do allow students to choose topics of interest to study and there are a lot of opportunities to do this within my Social Studies classes. For example, when completing a project about Progressive Era reform, students are given options of influential individuals to study. This allows some student choice on the matter.

I also allow students to choose the media in which they would like to complete their projects. Sometimes I will require that students create an infographic, but other times I will give them choices: poster, website, blog post, video, etc.

All choices are given by the instructor, which I think is necessary, especially when completing certain research projects. If I don’t give a list of influential individuals for students to choose from, someone might choose someone that doesn’t fit into the time period at all.

I think the learners’ autonomy can be increased by allowing choice more often throughout the year, but it is important for the teacher to provide the choices and avoid making all tasks too open-ended.

The Future of Learning Autonomy and Personalization

This is one of my reflections from my class, Leading Change: Go Beyond Gamification with Gameful Learning.

Prompt:
Imagine a future in your school (or other learning context) where learner autonomy and personalization are maximized.
Write a short reflection where you predict the future of this personalized learning in your school, both in the short term (5 years) and in the longer term (more than 10 years). How will teaching be different? How will the learners’ experiences be different?


Response:
High-achieving students will push back at first because they’ve learned how to play the “game of school” and probably won’t adjust right away. Soon though, students will get used to the new way that school works. They will realize that they have the independence to choose to learn about topics that most interest them, and they will be able to exhibit their learning in the way that best suits them.

In the long term, teachers will be able to devote more time to students who are struggling to meet their goals, as most students will be able to move toward their goals independently. Teachers will have more time to conference with students about how to meet their goals and set micro-goals instead of trying to convince students that the content is worth learning. With personal interest and stake in the content, students will be more likely to police themselves and complete the tasks that they need to complete in order to achieve their learning goals.