Customizing Automated Online Learning

For the past several years, a series of articles in academic journals have engaged the technological strategies deployed for customizing or adapting learning for different learners. This, of course, is done by the faculty (some) in an instructor-led course. However, in automated courses, the instructional design and the technologies then come into play to try to achieve this. The research discusses various strategies from creating learning models to profile users (based on psychology, cognition, preferences, personality types) to using pre-tests to tracking learners' behaviors online and using datamining to create a sense of a learner. Quite a bit of the writing dealt with technological innovations to create this sense of personalization. (It reads better in an academic paper than a blog, so I'll not weight this with intelligent agents, stigmergy, "stereotyping" and other elements.) And so forth. This has a long way to go before achieving nuanced analysis and provision of complex learning. Still, the attempts have been admirable and are intellectually engaging.

Customizing Instructor-Led Face-to-Face and Online

Instructors will customize learning based on their perceptions of learner needs, foremost if there are perceptions of dis-abilities. There are fewer mitigations for those who have particular learning preferences and even fewer for those studying English as a second language. Differing perceived learner abilities will often affect instructor teaching strategies. Most instructors customize a learning environment to meet the needs of different learners. Many will customize their feedback on assignments. Many will create social connections for their learners, whether they're in F2F courses or in online ones. Some instructors customize learning by empowering learners through the provision of information. They'll take into account the "expressed interests and needs of individual learners" in their curricular design. They support learners in making important choices about their own learning. Many even enrich the learning by setting up field trips, engaging with students who need job recommendations or test preparation. Few were willing to provide remediation in terms of course level readiness. There's a lot that technology cannot begin to emulate. And there's a lot to having caring and engaged humans that machines will never be able to stand in for, even if Americans seem to have an affection for the simulated / faked (per Umberto Eco's observations in "City of Robots" and the American love affair with hyperreality). For this research, I only had about 3 dozen respondents for the mirror surveys, with one set dealing with F2F learning and one dealing with online learning. I took this as opening salvo in the research and presented very initial findings recently (Hutchinson Community College, Colleague-to-Colleague Fall Forum, Nov. 2006). Indeed, I suppose if I wanted to push this further, I probably could. More on this later - I hope.