Adaptive e-learning technology for remedial students is becoming more sophisticated and personalized, reports Inside Higher Ed.
Desperate to boost success rates for developmental students, colleges are seeking foundation support to fund e-learning tools, according to Carol Twigg, president of the National Center for Academic Transformation.
Most companies are offering variations on a theme: “adaptive” technology that learns the strengths and weaknesses of individual students and tailors its tutorials to address their needs. Unlike a traditional sequence of instructions in a learning exercise, adaptive software adjusts to how well a student appears to understand different concepts. If a student struggles to learn a skill when it is presented one way, the software will detect her confusion and present it another way. The model is highly individualized instruction, without the many instructors that would be needed to adapt to each student’s needs the old-fashioned way.
Pearson has created MyFoundationsLab, an adaptive tutor for basic reading, writing, and math concepts. The company is selling to colleges as well as to professors and students.
McGraw-Hill offers LearnSmart and ALEKS.
Blackboard has partnered with K12 to develop remedial courses that use adaptive technology.
Two test-prep companies, Knewton and Grockit, have entered the field.
Grockit . . . is expanding its combination “adaptive” and “social” learning model into the developmental education market. Much like the live support chats that companies sometimes offer through their websites to help perplexed software users, Grockit retains a bullpen of Web-based tutors whom students can ask for help if the company’s adaptive teaching platform is not doing the trick.
Past attempts to teach basic skills through software “failed because the technologies weren’t able to deal with differential learning styles well,” warns Hunter R. Boylan, director of the National Center for Developmental Education.
The new e-tutoring technology claims to be personalized, using the techniques developed by Google, Netflix, Facebook and Amazon to understand user interests.
“With students who are already struggling, [the problem] in teaching to the mean is that you end up alienating students across the entire bell curve,” says Vineet Madan, vice president for learning ecosystems at McGraw-Hill.
“That’s where the adaptive technology comes in — that personalization,” says Madan.
Knewton can data-mine a student’s learning issues, says David Liu, Knewton’s chief operating officer. Each student takes a diagnostic test, which generates a list of concepts the student needs to learn.
As the student takes tutorials and quizzes in an attempt to improve his mastery of the concepts, the program logs how much time he is spending on various ideas and questions, as well as which questions he is answering wrong and how he is likely to have arrived at those wrong answers. In doing so, the program can allegedly pinpoint that student’s specific level of understanding of each concept and let him — and his instructor — know what he needs to work on in order to pass.
E-tutoring companies say their technology supplements teaching by live professors. It’s not intended to replace human interaction.
“The online environment is good for lots and lots of things, obviously, but … these are students who have no study habits,” says Twigg. “Creating that [classroom] structure is very important.”
Comments & Trackbacks (3) | Post a Comment
at 9:04 am
Joanne — does anyone know how truly, truly effective these “remedial” classes are? Our district uses “electronic” credit recovery and summer school classes. I just cannot help but believe they are a joke. Is there data that shows these classes truly give a student a solid foundation to build upon at a higher level? Thanks!
at 6:08 am
Isn’t this what Prepme does? They use adaptive learning for the college readiness market and have a lot of large school clients.
at 11:55 am
All students learn differently. This kind of program could work well for some students, and not so well for others. It really depends on their learning style.