How Data-driven Personalized Learning is Propelling the Learning Industry Forward

Educational institutes today, both schools and colleges are increasingly providing online learning opportunities for students for boosting educational productivity. According to a report, more than 6.3 million students in the U.S. chose at least one online course in the recent past.

Implementation of data-driven education and a personalized learning approach simulates the highest possible quality of the learning. It allows educators to provide students with precisely what is required on an individual level.

Let’s take a look at how data-driven personalization is tailoring the learning process of each individual according to their needs and capabilities.

1. Microlearning content gathering the steam

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in education, information speaks volumes. For the lessons to be engaging, seamless, and personalized they should be data-driven and also modular. The trend of micro-content is gathering steam as people are shifting towards using bite-sized data such as tweets, micro-videos, pins and memes. When it comes to education, content is now optimized and is well-suited for shorter durations.

Focusing on students, this microlearning-content strategy is not only making lessons smaller but also providing them with flexibility. The Columbia School of Business YouTube channel paints a detailed picture of a learning community. It publishes short, crisp videos on complex and intriguing business topics. This is done by featuring the faculty and students in the videos who speak about their work.

Microlearning can be an incredibly effective tactic for improving learner engagement and improving learning outcomes. Discover more in this video on Microlearning - Why You Should Order the Nuggets!

With this approach, lessons can now be learnt in small and digestible chunks for students who want to learn on-the-go and require clarity. Microlearning content is not only about making lessons smaller, but it is also about making them more flexible. This ensures the content has the learner's complete attention by mentioning what is relevant to them at the right time.

Gaps in the learnings of students can be further determined based on the analysis of completion and engagement rates. The lessons which students have struggled with can be recorded and accounted for in the next stage of teaching.

2. Catering data-driven learning in schools and colleges with personalization

Online learning opportunities, whether it is through mobile apps for schools or via educational online websites, can increase educational productivity when blended with personalization. It accelerates the rate of learning, reduces costs associated with instructional materials or program delivery, and helps with better utilization of teacher’s time.

The process for designing personalized content comprises four major metrics namely, accuracy, metacognition, time, and engagement. Metacognition means the student’s awareness regarding what he knows or he doesn’t know along with accuracy and time. It can be measured and analyzed through data.

You can track the time spent on learning the topic, answering questions related to the topic as well as the accuracy of the answers. You can also ask the students to rate their confidence levels on certain topics to make data-driven decisions.

An education management firm in New York has incorporated student reflection and goal-setting strategy right from the beginning of the schooling. With this self-assessment strategy, students gain a sense of accountability and instantaneously begin to self analyze their learning procedure.

With the behavioural and performance data of every individual, the information for each student’s learning experience can be further optimized. This method is known as adaptive learning where information is tailored according to the need of the individual learner.

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How To Utilize Data To Improve Operational and Learning Effectiveness.

Students are no longer distracted by wasting time on topics they have already mastered resulting in better proficiency rates. Due to this, the focus along with time is reallocated to the areas which require more attention to achieve better results.

3. Adaptive learning using real-time data to improve learning outcomes

Tseng College Graduate, International and Midcareer Education conducts many of its courses online, it has a robust online learning community and has developed through processes around adaptive learning to engage its students towards completing their courses.

Adaptive learning uses real-time data concerning the learning outcomes of students along with other participants such as teachers, managers, subject experts. It offers a variety of benefits such as long-term cost savings, personalized instructions, increased accessibility, and data gathering that support students as well as teachers in the long run. As per a report, a 27% increase in the pass rate was observed in the recent past while the final grade average increased by 10% to 79%.

This learning model concurrently assesses as well as instructs in real-time. Likewise, it also tracks millions of data points that it gathers to deliver current reporting for mentors, teachers, or experts. This further helps educators to derive actionable insights and formulate strategies to help students gain knowledge.

For more on the why and how of Adaptive Learning, watch and learn Why Your Learners Need Adaptive Learning.

And if you’re utilizing a Learning Management System and want to deliver Adaptive Learning, you should read this article on Why Using Totara Learn LMS is Best for Adaptive Learning.

4.Big Data Analytics instigating personalized learning

Big data is a transformative tool that delivers personalized education and analyzes student’s performance, recognizes strengths and weaknesses, knowledge gaps as well as generates relevant problem sets to help students progress.

Knowre, an education technology company delivers personalized and engaging learning experiences to students. It partners with schools with the goal of helping students reach their full potential.

Knowre includes a math program that identifies and helps students cover learning gaps. It analyzes students’ performance and assesses student’s data to identify any setbacks related to the subject. It also includes teacher’s dashboards to maintain a record of student’s performance which helps them filter students who require their attention.

Teachers can scale student’s knowledge as per student’s understanding, behaviour as well as social-emotional learning. They can further separate data across subgroups and classify students seeking intervention and create tiered plans as per the involvement.

Robust, integrated, award-winning learning analytics reporting tools such as Lambda Analytics “Zoola” are perfect for being able to quickly and easily gain insights for improving your online courses.

Conclusion

Lastly, with such a personalized data-driven approach, teachers can drive their plans and decisions to identify at-risk students who might need interventions and improve their learning skills leading to a better future.

Ready to keep climbing down the Learning Analytics and Reporting rabbit hole? Here’s what we’ve got for you:

Disclaimer: This article was contributed by guest blogger Rahul Varshneya. The views and opinions expressed belong to the guest blogger alone, and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or opinions of Lambda Solutions.

Rahul Varshneya is the co-founder of Arkenea. Rahul has been featured as a technology thought leader in numerous media channels such as Bloomberg TV, Forbes, HuffPost, Inc, among others.