OPPORTUNITIES
How could adaptive learning platforms assist me?
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Two areas stand out as being especially beneficial: earning educators more time; and giving teachers the capacity to make more informed decisions about their learners.
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The technology that these platforms use can help remove some of the more mundane and time-consuming tasks that are required of a teacher (Ross et al., 2019). This can include marking work, especially if there is a right or wrong response, as is often the case in mathematics; finding appropriate resources to match the level of each learner; and even managing classroom behaviour as students will be more engaged (Wardlow, 2016). Educators can, in turn, reinvest this time in better understanding their learners, in both a curriculum and pastoral sense, leading to improved outcomes all round. Part of this process will involve teachers having increased levels of data on hand which will inform how they proceed in a pedagogical sense, meeting the level at which the students are currently working with appropriate content (Ross et al., 2019).
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The algorithms that underpin these adaptive learning technologies are the fruit of human endeavour. In order to create these, expertise and judgement are required (Kitchin, 2017) and the quality of this input should directly correlate to the value that learners will gain from the platform. This is discussed further in the ‘Vision of the Future’ section.
What are some other benefits to the learner?
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Adaptive learning technologies have the potential to provide the closest thing to 1:1 learning (Couch et al., 2018). In crowded classrooms, teachers do not have time to personalise instruction for every student – technology can assist. As well as offering questions, and instructions, to students that correspond to the level at which they are working, certain technologies can also adapt the style of question to the context of the learner. This can have a positive impact on student performance. For example, evidence suggests that mathematical word problems that have been matched to the interests of the learner can help them answer questions more quickly and accurately. This can particularly assist students who have struggled in the orthodox tutoring environment (Walkington, 2013). However, these benefits will only be realised if correct information on the student has been input. Much of the time, this will come from a teacher who knows the student well, further underlining the value of the human in the process.