Personalised Learning - A Failure to Collaborate?

Personalised learning could suggest images of the individual alone and seeking information from a distant source or a machine. Personalised learning should be delightful learning, enhanced by collaboration and assessment for learning (formative assessment).

Personalised learning should be ‘personal’ to the learner and meet their individual aspirations, interests and learning needs.

This position paper draws upon a variety of approaches, piloted in past and current Ultralab research projects, where the focus has been on using technology to encourage the individual to take responsibility for their own learning and in so doing making that learning delightful. Our research, in identifying critical challenges, has shown the importance of a clear purpose, user-friendly technology, collaboration and true assessment for learning.

It is clear that there is a need for significant change in the way we engage in learning and teaching if the personalised agenda is to be achieved.

How personal can it get? The following projects that Ultralab has piloted suggest the answer is,  very personal.  All involve collaboration and assessment for learning. All view ICT as central to learning and assessment and not as a bolt-on.
 

NotSchool  (www.Notschool.net)

 
Notschool was created to re-engage hundreds of young people of school age back into learning and is specifically aimed at those for whom traditional alternatives have been exhausted.

All of the Notschool researchers are provided with an Apple Mac computer, printer and internet connection at home, with access to other equipment such as a digital camera, scanner, graphics tablet, and technical support. They operate within a secure online community of learners, teachers and experts to collaborate and create their own eportfolio. Although work can be set, produced and assessed online, the central idea is that it is not at all like school.  The learners are called 'researchers' and their teachers are 'mentors'. There are also subject 'experts', 'buddies' (undergraduate or post graduate students who offer support) and 'governors', prominent people who did not get on well at school. The researchers have moved from excluded to exclusive.

In addition to personal support and formative dialogue, using a range of media, NotSchool researchers have personalised accreditation; often using unique assessment components for each researcher to match their interests, choice of media and to recognise their individual abilities. Despite their very difficult circumstances 98% gain GCSE level accreditation. Some are embarking on degrees.

eViva  (www.eviva.tv)

 
The Eviva project run by Ultralab and commissioned by QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) exploited the mobile phone for both the text and voice annotation of work by peers and teachers. It was one of the tools, along with the personal computer, supporting a crucial formative and collaborative dialogue.

 
The eViva project involved key stage 3 students compiling online portfolios of their ICT work to evidence what they know and can do, the processes they have used and the decisions they have made. Annotating their work gave them an opportunity to show their thinking about their learning. This enables teachers to make a fairer assessment of capability. Parents, teachers and other students can then gave feedback online or using a mobile or landline phone.  The students had previously set their own baseline in consultation with the teacher. Once students have completed their portfolio, they have a unique oral assessment – the Viva – which they can take on any phone. The assessment can be done in a place and in a way that better suits the individual and in a way that removes exam hall stress, opening the door to greater expression and freedoms. The greater understanding of the assessment task shown by the children in the project has had a positive impact on the levels of attainment. Throughout the eViva process the teachers and students were much more focussed on the learning taking place. As with NotSchool, Eviva places the students at the heart of their own learning.

 (The report on the Eviva project can be accessed at http://www.qca.org.uk/7278.html)

Ultraversity  (www.ultraversity.net)

Ultraversity is a completely online degree course, developed by Ultralab, where the undergraduate researchers use action research methods to explore change and improvement, both for themselves and their workplace. Using Individual learning plans and independent learning modules they identify their own learning targets. Formative dialogue in online communities with other researchers, experts and facilitators combine with the use of a variety of innovative online technologies to make Ultraversity a unique learning experience. It is collaborative, formative and personal learning.

The International Certificate in Digital Creativity

 The International Certificate in Digital Creativity, developed by Ultralab, concentrates on accrediting the creative and not the atomised assessment points of a rigid checklist. Rigour is not confused with conformity. The teacher/facilitator adopts a guided but holistic viewpoint when assessing so that no two students’ work need be the same. The students may have used entirely different techniques yet satisfied the assessment criteria. This approach requires continual collaborative support and the development of the teacher as facilitator. Informed and collaborative professionals can operate a quality assurance model; potentially relieving them of the bureaucratic burden of quality control with its constant check points and justifications.

Not the Tyranny of the Tick

 The experience of Ultralab in piloting Not School, eViva  Ultraversity and the International Certificate in Digital Creativity illustrates how new technologies need not be bolt-ons to traditional practice. New technologies should not be viewed as discrete machines but as interchangeable means, capable of having a significant and positive impact in the support of personalisation. NotSchool, eViva, Ultraversity and the International Certificate in Digital Creativity all provide evidence in support of truly embedded technology as an integral part of the learning process. It is a learning process that brings immediacy in capturing data, thoughts, notes, dialogue and images whether still or moving. There is immediacy and simplicity in depositing that data in an ePortfolio where it can be displayed, analysed and made available to peers, facilitators and mentors.

The above projects show that assessment for learning is an essential feature of personalised learning and it need not mean the tyranny of the tick box.  Assessment for learning is a term widely misinterpreted and misunderstood but the Assessment Reform group defined it in 1999 as:

·         The provision of effective feedback to students;

·         The active involvement of students in their own learning;

·         Adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment;

·         A recognition of the profound influence assessment has on the motivation and self-esteem of students, both of which are crucial influences on learning;

·         The need for students to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve.

Not School, eViva Ultraversity, and the International Certificate in Digital Creativity by their very way of operating, fully address all the above criteria.

Whilst not underestimating the difficulties, all of those projects focused on the need to bring about a cultural change. Meaningful peer collaboration, the teacher as facilitator, the use of formative dialogue and the acceptance and integration of delightful technologies are all part of that cultural change. Together they can mean the successful personalisation of learning and assessment. However it is the teacher/lecturer who can be either a prime mover or the source of greatest inertia in any move to change the culture of learning.

“Teachers will not take up attractive sounding ideas, albeit based on extensive research, if these are presented as general principles which leave entirely to them the task of translating them into everyday practice – their classroom lives are too busy and too fragile for this to be possible for all but an outstanding few. What they need is a variety of living examples of implementation, by teachers with whom they can identify and from whom they can both derive conviction and confidence that they can do better, and see concrete examples of what doing better means in practice”

 Black, P. J., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and Classroom Learning. Assessment in Education.

Personalisation of the learning experience requires the careful implementation of a range of approaches, systems and technologies but most importantly it requires a sensitive, informed and well-supported teacher ready to accept and explore assessment for learning methods. Not every teacher is ready to implement personalised learning but purpose and motivation could be improved if teachers’ involvement could in itself be part of an assessment for learning programme leading to say ‘Investors in Learning’¹ status.

If we fuse some of the elements described above into a coherent or connate structure the cultural change we are seeking may be enabled in a dynamic and supportive framework that may look something like this:

•  An online community with the assessment process as its purpose and centred on the students’ ePortfolios.

• Assessment for learning incorporated into the formal assessment process.
• The opportunity for the eportfolios to be media rich thus encouraging diverse, multimodal evidence of achievement.
• The involvement of the awarding body in direct dialogue with the teacher and the learner, with moderation for fully e-assessed programmes taking place online; as evidenced by NotSchool, ICDC, eViva and Ultraversity.
• Teachers working collaboratively with other teachers in self selecting clusters with links to  other supportive bodies and all part of an online network capable of sharing expertise, good practice and ideas.

Conclusion

Ultralab is confident of the power of online communities. Between 2000 and 2003 an Ultralab team created and developed the online communities that later formed the National College for School Leadership’s online provision. These communities, regardless of geography, sector and time, enabled collaboration as serving heads shared ideas, communicated with decision makers and provided support for colleagues under pressure. This comment is typical:

“How useful on-line communities are for headteachers? - combating stress; being

totally up-to-date on all issues by having links to a range of web-sites ….local issues being addressed immediately; reduction of paperwork; collation of policies... For those of us sold on the idea, there can be no going back.”    A headteacher in the ‘Talking Heads’ online community. NCSL 2003.

As outlined above Ultralab has imaginatively explored the use of ICT in the support of learning, not as a bolt-on to existing practice, but as a revolution. New technologies and online communities have the potential to place personalised learning and assessment for learning at the heart of the education system. It is important that the focus remains fixed on people, supporting, reassuring and providing motivation for both the learner and teacher in the search for delightful learning.

Hargreaves, D. (2005),  ‘About Learning’, Report of the Learning Working Group, London Demos.

Black, P.J. and Wiliam, D (1998), ‘Assessment and Classroom Learning’, Assessment in Education 5 (1), pp 7-74

This paper was first published in ‘Personalizing Learning in the 21st Century’

Edited by Sara de Freitas and Chris Yapp.

Network Educational Press Ltd., October 2005

 
ULTRALAB - making learning delightful through the use of new technologies.

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