Personalisation

When we talk personalization, we tend to talk about targeting. You learn a certain set of things, you get tested, the personalization software finds knowledge gaps and runs you through the set of canned explanations that you need.

And

While not entirely useless, this conception doesn’t fit the bulk of my experience as either a teacher or a learner. In my experience, students often have very similar skill gaps, but the remedy for each student may be radically different.

from We Have Personalization Backwards

I though this was a brilliant post. To me it reinforces that the best online learning involves contact with real people in real ways (still #ds106). I’ve stuck with online learning when there is more conversation than automation. This may change if the ‘real personalisation’ comes to online systems.