Personalized Learning Pathways: Empowering Ownership, Creating Purpose, and Realizing Impact
The purpose of the Personalized Learning Pathways: Empowering Ownership, Creating Purpose, and Realizing Impact playlists and modules is to provide personalized, customizable learning experiences centered on adult learners as agents of their own learning. By living this experience as learners, educators will have the mindset and skills to transfer this experience to their young learners, resulting in increasing students’ deeper learning capacities.
TAKE A VIDEO TOUR
The video to the left walks you through this site and its four playlists, including the purpose of various sections and some of the tools to help you develop a do-able plan for your own modularized learning. Beyond tips and tricks, this video is designed to introduce you to the playlist and its modules so that you are more comfortable with the model as you live it and learn about it.
THINK ABOUT
As you go through the modules think about...
How are all students being served with this learning experience (including all assignments/tasks)?
Are clear, high expectations stated for all, using student-friendly language that guides the students to equitable outcomes?
Is authentic evidence of student/teacher learning a central feature of assessment practices?
What is your most marginalized population(s)? In what ways have you differentiated or scaffolded to meet the needs of those learners?
Does this opportunity assume students will have prior experience that will allow access?
(Marginalized populations include: homeless, EL, gifted/talented, students with IEPs/504s, racial/ethnic minority, low-SES)
PLAYLIST COMPONENTS
Education Elements. Personalized Learning Models for Secondary Schools.
Playlist: a curated list of learning experiences that results in learning outcomes related to a topic.
Modules: "chunks" of learning with a set of learning outcomes organized by learning activities.
Checkpoints: places to pause and check learning progress, including peer-to-peer feedback and conferencing, instructor/coach-to-learner interactions, and personal reflections.
Using a Playlist as a Learning Pathway
A playlist can be used in sequence or out-of-sequence, depending on the learning goals and desired outcomes. If exploration is the aim, a beginner pathway may be more meandering, with the user choosing learning activities as needed.
If a currency is desired (credit, a micro-credential, etc.) or a common end is the goal (e.g., on a PLC/CTT), the personal learning plan will include ways to practice the new learning as well as ways to demonstrate it when the user is ready to move from module to module through checkpoints.
Learning pathways include learner choice ("Must Do" vs. "May Do"), and encourage learner autonomy with pace and place for learning as well as with application of the desired outcomes.
Modern Teacher. Instructional Design: Learning Plans.
COMPONENTS OF A MODULE
Tucker, Catlin. May 2020. The Building Blocks of an Online Lesson.
What are the "building blocks" of module design?
Catlin Tucker (2020) offers the building blocks on the left as the foundational components of online learning. These components are true of both in-person and virtual learning as well as in both synchronous and asynchronous situations.
When moving learning online, teachers often start with a unit and break it into modules based on the learning in each bundle of learning objectives. Bundles are determined by what students need to know, understand, and be able to do across the traditional unit. A bundle becomes the framework within a module on which teachers hang learning experiences across the building blocks on the left.
The Virtual/Blended Learning playlist will walk you through this design process to help you understand how to balance these building blocks throughout a series of modules.
LEARN MORE
Jennifer Gonzalez is the creator of Cult of Pedagogy, a website with a blog, podcasts, videos, and more. She has multiple podcasts that tie to playlist-based (or modularized) learning on the site. Cult of Pedagogy is an excellent resource for you as you explore shifts toward anytime/anywhere learning that empower teachers and students to think and create beyond brick and mortar. Please consider exploring the site in more detail.
Click here to listen to the podcast "Using Playlists to Differentiate Instruction" as Jennifer Gonzalez interviews teacher Tracy Enos. They discuss how playlists can be used to meet learners' broad needs as well as to attend to student choice in accessing curated content, making progress through learning experiences, and how they express what they know, understand, and can do.
MAKING A PLAN AND GETTING STARTED
Words will often be BOLD if they are part of how learners are engaging with learning experiences or if they are key language in the context of a playlist or module
You will notice that the structure of each module is similar in that each module contains:
A title, one or more competencies, learning outcomes, and what you will do in the module
A learning pathway with learning tasks organized by your learning behaviors and responsibilities
This includes Launch, Learn, and Reflect sections
Many learning pathways include self-assessments to let you customize where you enter the learning
Module resources (videos, podcasts, slide decks, templates, protocols, examples/non-examples, etc.)
Additional virtual/blended learning considerations (these are often embedded in the learning pathway as well)
A checkpoint (self-assessments, quick checks, peer feedback opportunities, reflection questions, etc.)
A celebration of learning
Playlists with multiple modules take time and planning to navigate with confidence; making a plan before you start will help the process be manageable and meaningful
Module 4 of the Virtual/Blended Learning Playlist of this site includes tools for navigating the playlist and its modules such as:
Metacognition prompts
Sample project planning tools that help increase productivity
Checklists for organizing the scope of the work with other timelines
Video tutorials for maximizing the Google Suite during this learning process
Each "Start Here" page has a clickable Playlist Navigation Panel for the playlist that includes the modules and their competencies, learning outcomes, and what you will DO in each module