As trends in education and training evolve, one concept has proven its staying power: personalized learning. For several years, it has steadily transformed how individuals engage with knowledge and skill development. With the progress in AI and state-of-the-art learning technologies, we are eliminating many of the barriers, such as scaling personalised content, tracking individual progress in real-time, and providing timely, adaptive feedback.
But what does this mean for educators, trainers, L&D professionals, and learners alike? Let’s explore the emerging possibilities and how they might reshape the future of learning.
What is personalised learning?
Before we explore the future of personalised learning, let’s quickly recap what it actually is.
Personalised learning is an educational approach that recognises that not all learners learn in the same way. What makes sense for one learner will fall flat for another. Personalised learning aims to tailor teaching materials and methods to best suit each learner.
What are the benefits of personalised learning?
Tailoring learning experiences to match individual preferences, abilities, and goals provides substantial benefits for both learners and educators. From increasing engagement to enhancing learning outcomes, personalised learning has numerous advantages.
Empowering and engaging learners
Personalised learning enhances learner autonomy and control, encouraging a sense of empowerment and higher engagement levels. This approach not only significantly elevates outcomes but also plays a crucial role in nurturing a lifelong passion for learning.
Adapting to learners’ needs and interests
In addition to feeling more engaged and empowered, learners want to know that their learning is relevant to them and their goals. Personalised learning helps achieve that, allowing learners to create and follow courses that meet their needs and interests.
Building learners’ confidence
Tailoring learning to a learner’s strengths also builds confidence. While learners who consistently struggle become demotivated and reluctant to explore new ideas, personalised learning sets all learners up for success, creating a strong foundation for future learning.
Transforming educators’ roles
With personalised learning, educators can also take on a different (and often more rewarding) role. Rather than mandating activities, educators become guides, advocates, and mentors. They have the time and space to really inspire learners, which creates an ideal learning environment.
What will the future of personalised learning look like?
While the future is always uncertain, the rapid evolution of technology offers exciting possibilities for personalised learning. With AI, data analytics, and immersive digital tools continuing to advance, how we tailor education to meet individual needs is bound to transform. Let’s explore some of the potential developments that could shape the future of personalised learning, creating even more impactful and flexible experiences for learners.
One-on-one
Every learner is unique and will face their own distinct challenges. At school or in a lecture theatre, it’s rarely possible to support all learners. However, AI offers the hope of individualised support for every learner throughout their learning journey.
With automated learning, learners could access all the support they need, whenever they need it. This wouldn’t replace highly-trained human educators. Instead, this would offer additional support and free up resources for where they’re really needed.
Virtual and remote
Location and mobility issues should never present a barrier to learning. With the increasing availability and sophistication of virtual classrooms, they don’t have to.
Learners could fully engage with all learning materials and collaborate effectively with educators and their peers. As virtual classrooms evolve, the focus will be on creating a strong sense of teamwork and community among learners.
Continuous and lifelong
Learning isn’t just for the young. As lifestyles and careers change, more of us will want to engage with learning throughout our lives. This could be for professional purposes, personal development, or even just for fun.
Personalized learning will help keep education relevant throughout our lives and extend our access to teachings beyond the formal education window.
Adaptive
We all have areas where we’re naturally gifted and others where we need a little more help. Adaptive education and training could automatically assign more time and resources to areas where learners need to develop their skills or knowledge further.
As well as improving academic outcomes by targeting weaknesses, adaptive education would keep learners engaged. learners wouldn’t be tasked with repetitive sections of training for skills or knowledge they’ve already mastered. Instead, they could move on as soon as they’re ready.
Collaborative
Personalized learning encourages learners to work together, share ideas, and explore topics as a group. Making this kind of peer support and communal problem-solving common practice would encourage creativity and novel suggestions.
Equitable
Education and learning must be open to all. Personalised learning offers new avenues for diverse groups of learners to have equal access to resources and to be supported in their learning journey.
Regardless of abilities, anybody could receive necessary additional help. Carefully-designed AI systems could also help eliminate bias, creating a fairer and more inclusive learning environment.
Create personalised learning experiences with Moodle
With all the benefits of personalised learning, it’s easy to assume that implementing it must be costly or complicated. However, Moodle makes personalising the learning experience both accessible and straightforward. Moodle empowers educators to create flexible, tailored learning journeys that cater to the unique needs and goals of each student. Through its intuitive features, teachers can design courses that adapt to different learning styles, paces, and progress levels, providing a more meaningful and engaging educational experience for everyone.
One of Moodle’s standout features for personalisation is the restrict access function, which enables educators to control access to activities or course sections based on specific criteria like dates, grades, group membership, or task completion. This ensures learners progress through the course at their own pace, only moving forward when they’ve met the necessary requirements. Moodle’s customisable dashboards also allow teachers to give individual learners or groups targeted feedback and support. Dashboards can be tailored to show relevant activities, deadlines, or learning paths, providing a clear and structured view of what each learner needs to focus on next. By leveraging these tools, educators can easily foster a personalised learning environment that supports student success.
