A teaching and learning approach called "adaptive learning" aims to personalize classes, readings, practice exercises, and evaluations to the needs of specific students by considering their performance and ability levels at the moment. The technology is being widely adopted by learners across the globe as it is an easy and convenient way to learn from anywhere and at any time.
In today's age, an individual student's learning path is "adapted" in real-time using adaptive learning software, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to personalize learning. Faculty and administrators can later examine the needs of certain students or groups of students enrolled in a course using the data collected by adaptive learning software.
They can then modify a course in between terms and during a term to better meet those needs. Students can also modify their learning strategies by using data on their performance and skills. The growing use of smartphones and digital platforms has contributed to the adoption of technology.
What Does Exactly Adaptive Learning Technology Mean?
A platform where various courses can be created is frequently referred to as adaptive learning software. In many cases, the term "adaptive courseware" refers to a collection of lessons and practice exercises in a digital format for a particular course that makes use of the underlying adaptive learning technology.
Publishers of adaptive courseware on a particular subject frequently create a library of resources, lessons, practice exercises, and assessments from which instructors can choose, arrange, and design their specific course.
Adaptive learning has the potential to advance equity in higher education by enhancing course outcomes and lowering the cost of course materials, especially for Indigenous, and students who come from diverse backgrounds.
How Does Adaptive Learning Work?
A web-based platform is used to design courses that use the adaptive learning approach. The platform would have every piece of knowledge needed for the training. For every learning task, there would be associated activities, assessments, and materials.
The software would choose the most suitable level of assignments to work on once a student completes an evaluation. Continually, based on their performance, they would be directed toward the most pertinent activity. Others might need to revisit earlier content while some students may breeze through the lessons. As the students use the platform more frequently, it gets more aware of their needs and may thus choose lessons that will support their academic objectives.
What Are the Benefits of Adaptive Learning?
When used properly, adaptive learning is a technique for enabling personalized learning strategies including scaffolding, flexibility, and resources and instruction that are specifically customized to the requirements of the learner. Technology for adaptive learning supports research-based teaching techniques like low-stakes formative assessments, explicit explanations of learning objectives, and instant feedback on practice activities.
Other potential advantages of adaptive learning include
- It might help students become more successful and self-reliant. Students can focus their efforts where they are most needed when they get data from adaptive learning software on the abilities they have and haven't mastered.
- It enables students to work at their own pace, skipping over subjects they have mastered while revisiting and rehearsing others more gradually.
- Offering classes and activities that are exactly approximate to their needs and readiness might increase student engagement.
- It can be used as a less expensive alternative to pricey textbooks.
- It offers a framework for keeping the course objectives, lessons, practice exercises, and assessments in line and demonstrates to students how each course component connects to the course objectives. Similarly, when students struggle to understand a concept, educators can check to see whether some instructional components aren't quite in line with the goals.
- It offers pertinent and timely data that teaching staff and administrators can utilize to assess the performance of selected course subpopulations.
- Identifying specific students, or even specific portions in a multi-section course, that require attention, it allows instructors and administration to offer timely and targeted help.
- It helps academic staff and administrators to continuously improve by comparing data from different semesters.
Conclusion
Due to new product advancements and the formation of alliances between e-learning software providers and educational publishers, the concept of adaptive learning has attracted an increasing amount of attention over the past several years.
It takes research-based strategies, deliberate instructional design, strategic implementation, mechanisms for continuous improvement, a dedication to equality and student care, as well as research-based approaches to adaptive learning to realize its potential benefits.
