In the previous post, I discussed the overarching concept of personalized learning. Now, I'd like to delve deeper into the "how" of providing personalized learning.
First and foremost, online and blended learning isn't for every student in every situation. Therefore, if you throw students into online and blended learning without giving them the tools and support they need, they will not succeed. However, for those students who are ready for online and blended learning there can be so many ways to help them that didn't exist twenty years ago without a lot of human-intensive labor.
Let's take students who need to review the basic number system. Twenty years ago in a third grade classroom, the teacher would take one unit to review the basic number system and label the ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on. He or she would assign a worksheet or problems from a textbook and the student would continue on with his/her peers at a steady pace, allowing for not a lot of flexibility from the really bright students to the struggling students.
Today, those same students can enter into a virtual classroom and take a pretest to see what concepts they're missing. Teachers can then personalize their learning to reinforce that concept, while giving the more advanced students more advanced learning opportunities, such as applying the place values of numbers to money. The students who are struggling can then work in a smaller group and work on one-to-one correspondence and grouping objects into groups of ten to give them a more concrete example of place value. Students from all areas of the spectrum are then able to do activities that meet their needs best.
Competency Based Learning
The goal of each grade level in the US is that students become competent at the skills they need before moving onto the next grade-level. A school using competency-based learning is one where students aren't bound to their seats for a certain amount of time (Carnegie-unit), but rather learn the skill they need and move on to the next skill. It's kind of like a 4, 6, and 10 year old who have never taken swimming lessons before. The four year old has been exposed to the water, but has never formally taken lessons. The six year old is terrified of the water and the 10 year old is comfortable, but he/she needs some basic skills before he/she can move to the next level. In this case, the four-year-old is likely to be more competent in the skill of submerging his/her face than the six or ten-year-old. The four-year-old will likely put his/her face in the water and push off from the wall demonstrating competency in the prone glide, while the level of competency of the six year old may be standing on the bottom step of the pool without crying. In the case of swimming, they're all getting the same type of instruction, but it's being tailored to individual needs.
Standards Based Learning
To better understand standards-based grading, think about how you are evaluated in a workplace. You have a clear set of expectations that are given to you and you are expected to meet or exceed those expectations. Standards based grading is giving students clear expectations of what they should be able to do by the time they finish a unit or lesson. From there, you can assess whether a student is proficient, partially proficient, not proficient, or advanced and adjust your instruction accordingly.
Mastery-Based Learning
Mastery-based learning is a blend of competency-based and standard-based learning. Mastery-based means that students have to master a skill or concept at a critical level before being allowed to move forward. With online learning, you can easily adjust the mastery-level of assessments before allowing students to proceed. So when a student takes a test or quiz and receives less than a 60%, for example, he/she would be required to retake that before the next unit will even open.
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