Adaptive learning works on a simple and yet equally important concept: the coursework should progress in coherence with a student’s learning capabilities. Imparting education through online media is a common practice now, and the introduction of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence has made a drastic transformation in the way a student can learn and develop. Adaptive learning proves to be a useful tool in eLearning because it focuses on learning the learner and progressing according to an individual student.
eLearning industry relies on computerized adaptive tests (CATs), where the difficulty of a question depends on how a student answered the previous question. In simple words, a right answer will progress to a tougher question and a wrong answer will be followed by an easier one.
Adaptive learning, thus, proves to be a useful tool for teachers, parents, and guardians to know about a student’s problem solving and thinking skills. Adaptive learning has become an integral part of the education app industry as it brings along the following benefits:
The ever-increasing class size in our conventional school systems is a major hindrance in paying individual attention to every student. The same issue also makes it difficult to design a teaching method that suits every student’s needs. This is where education apps with adaptive learning come into the picture, as teachers can segregate classes into smaller groups, giving due attention to each group according to their learning ability.
The strongest suit of adaptive learning is its ability to understand students’ learning graph and analyzing their strengths and areas of improvement in real time. This makes room for optimum personalization of education apps where students are able to learn a concept thoroughly before proceeding to more difficult topics and concepts.
In a conventional classroom, it’s hard to ensure that all the students have understood a topic and are on the same page. However, education apps with adaptive learning create a personalized course of action. This enables students to learn at their own pace, and they are better equipped to understand a new concept.
The K-12 students are rightfully also known as digital natives, for they are more adaptive to the evolving mobile technology. Adaptive technology can easily leverage upon this generation’s love for everything tech. Students engage better with their mobile devices, and education apps can help them learn through personalized education programs. Education apps that offer an unprecedented level of immersive experience make learning fun and engaging process.
The best thing about adaptive learning is that its benefits are not limited to a mobile screen, for it also opens gates to blended learning. Teachers have unlimited access to their students’ performance on these apps, and thus, they have all the insights they need to address in a one-to-one session. It empowers teachers in imparting education in a more efficient and pragmatic way.
That said, adaptive learning, like technologies of various industries, brings along its own set of challenges:
Teachers and instructors tend to have a strong opinion that computers and digital technology leave students at the mercy of algorithms. They believe technology has a limited scope of personalization and thus, if students are unable to master a topic, they may get demotivated quite easily.
Solution: Teachers and instructors need to understand that adaptive learning requires them to change their roles to information managers. They’ll need to work in tandem with adaptive learning to reap the best benefits of education apps.
Imparting education through adaptive learning is expensive. Developing an adaptive learning solution is not only a matter of costs but also a concern on skills’ grounds. Institutions need to find the right team of developers who are able to handle such projects deftly.
Solution: Institutions that want to collaborate with adaptive learning must research the mobile app development market. They’ll need to ensure that the company to which they are outsourcing the project is capable and experienced in handling such projects.
Another major concern that teachers and instructors face while working with education apps and adaptive learning is how to analyze the data at hand. All the graphs, patterns and information at their disposal has to be understood.
Solution: Conduct data analysis program to help teachers and instructors learn how to work with adaptive learning.
Adaptive learning has brought along a plethora of benefits for teachers, instructors, institutions and most importantly, students. Education has never been about being better than others, but being a productive contributor to the world. Education has never been a race, but the conventional education system did make many students feel lagging behind their classmates.
Adaptive learning has enabled teachers to facilitate learning at an individual student’s pace. They can use the data to help students learn better, and if needed, create a new learning program. Of course, this technology also brings its own set of benefits and challenges. We are sure this article would have cleared many of your doubts revolving around this technology marvel.