Elyas Felfoul, Director of Policy Development & Partnerships, WISE, Qatar Foundation
A new report by The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU) discusses how personalised learning has been accelerated by the pandemic. Yet, questions around personalised learning are many, to start with what is personalised learning? How is this different from traditional learning? And how will the future of education be shifted with this new approach?
EIU expert Elyas Felfoul says that personalised learning is not a new concept in education and in fact, strong pedagogy has always relied on differentiation, scaffolding and personalised student interventions when necessary.
“However, during this most recent period, it became the case that we began to replace traditional methods of student support with technology, and understandably so. We use the term ‘unprecedented’ so often now that it’s somewhat lost its meaning – but for many schools and teachers the challenge of engaging their students online was a mammoth task that they had no frame of reference for,” he said.
Felfoul is also the Director of Policy Development & Partnerships at WISE, Qatar Foundation’s global education initiative.
“It was easy to accept technology as an initial panacea to all of our remote learning problems, mostly because it seemed to check a lot of boxes for us, but it quickly became apparent that in order to be effective as a personalised learning tool, the use of technology has to maintain the human experience at its centre, i.e. meaningful interactions between students and teachers. This is by no means an indictment of technology, it has been indispensable over the last 18 months, but what we know now as a result of this intense testing period is that personalised learning doesn’t just depend on the tool alone, but rather how it’s used,” said Felfoul.
Effective personalised learning through technology relies on three things; teachers being properly trained in how to leverage analytics/AI to identify student needs and intervention opportunities, edtech products that are built with solid pedagogy at its centre, a clear strategy on how to leverage edtech toward building students’ 21st century competencies. Right now, many schools are struggling to realise all three of these objectives and this deeply affects the way students are able to navigate this new era of hybrid, digital learning.
“If we want to see an easier transition for students into a post-COVID-19 classroom, we have to begin investing time and resources into upskilling our teacher workforce so that they are able to demonstrate best practice when it comes to navigating online tools. We also have to work harder at instilling critical thinking skills in our students so that they’re better able to use technology effectively and finally, building solid school strategies around technology so that we create environments that support innovation, testing and collaboration,” said Felfoul.
The EIU report says students and parents were not as supportive of personalised learning through edtech as teachers were.
Why are teachers more receptive of this approach than students and families?
“The short answer here is fatigue. Any parent of a K-12 student will tell you how difficult it has been to keep their children motivated during remote learning. Despite offering so many opportunities for collaboration and connectivity, remote learning often resulted in students learning in almost complete isolation, the experience of which soon became synonymous with ‘personalised learning’. What personalised learning can actually offer in the best circumstances, is a way for students to recognise their own strengths and build on these progressively whilst working on their individual learning gaps with the support of their peers and teachers. In fact, this student-centred approach also promises the opportunity for us to see more independent learners who are capable of choosing their own pathways to success,” he said.
“This is however, still someway off for us to realise collectively and again, relies on proper time and investment in our education systems. It also depends on an affirmative move away from traditional assessments as a measure of student success. Any teacher can guide their students through assessment led memorisation of facts and figures, but it takes a great deal of effort to create intellectually curious young people. Unfortunately until we begin to see the value of the latter, we won’t be able to see the true potential of personalised learning in our classrooms,” he added.
Traditional school systems have been built on 19th century fundamentals of whether students could operate effectively in agrarian or industrial economies. Present is an era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“If we continue to deliver this Victorian idea of teacher-led pedagogy and learning, we are doing a huge disservice to a student population whose futures rely on their ability to engage and interact within a digital economy. Having said that, it is difficult to sometimes determine how personalised learning is ‘working’, mainly because there are few definitions of how 21 century skills building should be measured and little consensus on what these skills actually are,” said Felfoul.
In the role what technology plays when it comes to personalised learning, there remains somewhat of a disjointedness between educators and edtech providers.
Teachers and schools for the most part invest in technologies that allow them to do what they already practice, but more efficiently.
“This is understandable since oftentimes a huge amount of a school’s budget can be lost by selecting the wrong tool. However, this also demonstrates a serious problem in the way that schools are able to make those procurement choices; with little information on what works, what doesn’t, and why, you’ll continue to have highly risk averse schools unwilling to take a step toward experimentation, iterative design and perhaps, potential failure — all pillars of true innovation building,” said Felfoul.
He added that the truth of the matter is that unless schools choose to take a leap of faith with these providers and have a far more collaborative interaction with them, they will not be able to pre-emptively procure technology that meets the evolving needs of its students and the ecosystem they exist in.
