Not Personalized will = Not Good Enough

This post is a deeper dive follow up to my initial article Edtech is on Fire: My Top 5 Predictions for the Coming Decade

I've been a teacher. Granted, it was WAY back in the dark ages at the turn of the millennium. But I know what it's like to try to personalize instruction for 20-30 children per class period. Even without considering the personalization that must be applied to support students with disabilities or those who are English Language Learners, you have to meet the needs of 20-30 different little people with different talents, skills, likes, dislikes, developmental schedules, families, stresses, and dreams. It's incredibly rewarding to make the attempt, but you're always aware that it’s only that...an attempt.

What inevitably happens is that gifted students (in a particular subject) will get your time and attention because they demand it and it's fun to challenge them; and lower-performing students (in a particular subject) will get your time and attention because they need it most. But students in the middle who could be challenged receive little to no individualized attention because they're "doing fine" without it. The problem is that “doing fine” is no longer good enough. In fact, we have hit a crucial point when not personalized will = not good enough for all students, regardless of their level of mastery or talent in any given area. And that is, in my belief, the truest expression of “equity” in education that we can create.

Changing Expectations for Education

When the 20th century model of school was created in the United States, we had much simpler goals focused on increased literacy, understanding of basic math, and high school graduation. This provided a solid foundation for a life and career at the time. Toward the end of the century we extended the same model into college. While this deepened the complexity of the concepts taught to our future workforce, we continued to offer the same content, at the same pace, using the same methodologies to all students, en masse. We have not yet tackled true differentiation or personalization.

The Time Is Now

And that’s because personalization of learning cannot truly be done without the assistance of technology. Not at scale. And there's no longer an option to achieve global educational equity without using strategies at scale. Not with 7 billion headed to 9 billion (and many believe 11 billion) humans on the planet over the first half of this century. But the pressure of that many people (plus robots, but that's a whole separate post) is not just "Can we teach them all?" but "Can we teach them things that maximize their talents and prepare them for careers that make them self-sufficient?"

THAT is no small feat, and it’s made even more challenging by the speed at which technology, and thereby what we need to learn, is changing. The only thing that can help modern humans to keep up with the pace of technological change is, ironically, technology. It turns out that learning is a very complex process (something I will visit in more depth in another post), so when I say we don’t have enough data, I mean we REALLY don’t have enough data.

In order to do our very best to teach people new things, we have to understand so much about them as an individual. We have to understand not only their talents and challenges, but what their past experiences have been, what they already know, and to what degree. We have to take into account mental and emotional aspects of learning. We have to know things about their family and home life.

Think that’s way too much to take into consideration? You must not be a teacher.

Do I think AI will be able to collect and compile all of that complex data to facilitate increased personalization of learning? Over time, yes.

Do I think AI in education is a panacea that solves all problems in coming decades (or ever)? No.

What AI can do is increase the reach and retention of learning and assessment. Over time it can be taught to leverage benchmarks, standards, scaffolding, and content curation to serve as a crucial teacher’s aide, providing insights on student learning trends and helping to guide individualized student improvement. It can also provide students with a personal approach that leverages their talents, tools, and preferences. And while this big vision is still on the horizon, and we are just taking our first steps in that direction, I predict that we will see acceleration over the next decade that will shift the way that we all see education, for good.