Over the past few years, the term "adaptive learning" has been gaining popularity. An example of this occurred in 2015 when Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announced that they would be donating a large sum of their Facebook shares to personalized learning development, among other charitable endeavors.
As an ever increasing amount of adaptive learning technology emerges, the one-size-fits-all model of education becomes more and more out of touch. While adaptive learning tends to refer to tailoring a course or program to the abilities of a specific student, we suggest going further and personalizing the entire student experience.
Sending Targeted Content
A message meant for a first year student might not be relevant to a second or third year student. By being able to send content to specific groups of students, we are making sure the right students are receiving the right information, at the right time.
In a 2016 study by Bowling Green State University, it was found that 72% of students consider student organization emails spam. By personalizing the content students receive we are not only telling them that we care about them on an individual level, but we are creating a degree of trust. If a student receives relevant content exclusively, then they would be more inclined to read every message. Important emails get overlooked because students aren't convinced the information being sent to them is of much concern.
The Future of Personalizing the Student Experience
As stated in a previous blog post, we believe that Artificial Intelligence will come to the forefront of education. Expanding on this point, it is not overzealous to think that in the near future we will be able to plug in data trends for each student, and receive an individual curriculum designed to nurture student persistence and success. In the same vein, when talking about the student experience as a whole, we predict AI will be able to understand and develop student interest patterns and be able to automatically send them relevant content. An example of this would be a student who attends poetry readings or book discussions would be sent events and opportunities relating to Literature.
While technology does have the potential to revolutionize education, nothing compares to peer to peer support. By having a program perform these previously mentioned remedial tasks, we would be freeing up valuable admin-time, allowing our higher ed professionals the opportunity to interact with students on a personal level. If you have any thoughts/opinions on personalizing higher education, feel free to tweet to us, using the hashtag #adaptivelearning.