What is Adaptive Learning?
Adaptive Learning
The concept of Adaptive Learning has been around for decades, and fundamentally refers to learning systems where the path of possible future learning is determined by responses and feedback from the learner. In its essence, it allows for effective instruction and learning regardless of whether an individual response is deemed correct or incorrect by adjusting the difficulty of subsequent challenges, and encouraging revision on areas not yet mastered.
More modern adaptive learning systems also take into account the learner's particular learning style when determining the best approach to present the information. A study by Hwang et al. demonstrated that learners do not naturally consider their learning style when selecting a learning platform and saw this as evidence of greater need for adaptive learning systems to better meet each learner's specific needs. (Hwang et al., 2013)
Adaptive Learning approaches have already become widely used in education, with platforms such as Khan Academy, ALEKS, Knewton Alta, SmartSparrow, and SquirrelAI as good examples. Inititally, many learning platforms focused on math as it is comparatively simple to map out a curriculum of study and then develop a personalized curriculum map for the learner first in a placement assessment, and revising that map over time as the system gathers more data about the learner's understanding. More recently, it has begun to see adoption in other areas such as language learning in apps such as DuoLingo and in business contexts, helping large corporations to manage employee onboarding and upskilling and offering “bite sized” professional development and just in time learning. Axonify is one of the bigger players at the moment in this space.
What is an Adaptive Learning Coach?
Learner Profile
The Adaptive Learning Coach would take this a step further, not only providing access to adaptive learning resources in a wide variety of fields, but also developing a rich body of evidence, curated both by the coach and the learner to tell a personal story about their learning journey. The Adaptive Learning Coach develops a learner profile, and can offer insight into how someone learns best based on analysis of past results and feedback. It’s focus is not just on connecting learners with the next step in their learning journey, but also helping them become better learners along the way. It can help suggest ways the learner can document and gather evidence of their learning to share with others while providing a space to store and organize all of that evidence and the ability to select only the most relevant as needed.
The adaptive learning coach is fundamentally mobile and open learning, as the learner is able to bring it with them into whatever learning context they find themselves in, across a variety of devices and interfaces and embodies the mantra of lifelong learning. By responding to your interests, curating a rich body of evidence of mastery along the way, and even helping you to learn more about your strengths you are able to learn more effectively and to grow as a learner.
How would you use an Adaptive Learning Coach?
Mobile First
Access to the Adaptive Learning Coach would supplement your learning regardles of where it was occurring. Having access on a portable personal device such as a smartphone would be crucial in gathering evidence of learning, and providing context.
A voice and audio interface as the primary interface for learners leveraging natural language processing helps keep the user's hands (and eyes) free so that they can keep their focus on the task at hand and only interact with the coach when needed.
Contextually relevant information about the learner is shared, avoiding information overload and helping the user to remain focused on their current goal
Crucially, you could not achieve this without the ability for mobile access as so much of learning occurs away from fixed devices such as computers and laptops.
Curate Learning Evidence
Wherever possible, it would gather data about their progress in a particular area of study and use this to build a holistic representation of the learner's journey and story. This may come in the form of pictures, audio recordings, videos, or links to other resources that help to tell the story of the learner's journey.
The Adaptive Learning Coach would also have access to assessment data and past results demonstrating a learner's level of mastery in a given domain.
As a Navigator
The Adaptive Learning Coach would not necessarily need to be the instructor, or platform for learning. More importantly, it would connect learners to the information, tools, and people they need to support them in their learning journey
Not only would you plan and explore future learning opportunities, you would always be able to recall and reflect upon past learning in a very personalized manner.
When searching for an expert human for support, the learner could be directed to local connections only (suitable for younger learners, or school/community environments) or widen the search to a more global network of learners either with adult support, or independently once old enough.