How Personalized Learning Technology Prepares Students for a Digital Future

The Digital Future

The concept of predicting the future can be problematic, especially when the present uncertainty of the pandemic hasn’t yet run its course. However, while we may not have all the details yet, it’s probably accurate to say that we have identified some broad strokes. Instantaneous global connectivity. Big data and automation driven by advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Integrative critical thinking skills in the workforce. We are on the cusp of all of these changes as we begin to emerge from COVID-19 into what could possibly become the Roaring 2020s1.

How will education adapt to these changes and meet the resulting challenges? In the past year, schools have pivoted to a more flexible system of blended learning out of sheer necessity. Despite the difficulties inherent in any sudden change, educational technology has led the way by making it possible for learning to continue during global upheaval and be more personalized for students. Now we must consolidate these gains into a workable model for the future. Here are some ways that might happen.

What constitutes a digital future for students?

Former executive editor of Wired and futurist Kevin Kelly wrote in 2016 of the 12 inevitable forces that will change human society in the near future2. Most relevant for students are forces such as “cognifying” or cognitively-enhanced processes and industries. Think beyond AI-powered customer service chats to entire fields altered by its presence, including science, medicine, and education. AI-powered insight is already here, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of forces at play. So, amid all the change, how will we prepare students to navigate these realities right now?

Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern University, identified three key literacies for students: technological literacy, or “knowledge of mathematics, coding, and basic engineering principles3,” data literacy, and human literacy. These literacies form the basis for a potential curriculum in higher education—which is Aoun’s primary audience—as well as K-12 education amidst the shift to a world packed with artificial intelligence. Combined with these literacies are the cognitive capacities Aoun identified: critical thinking, systems thinking, entrepreneurship, and cultural agility. These capacities align with the new literacies and make them come to life.

In a personalized learning environment, students learn at a pace and through instructional approaches appropriate for their needs. Learning activities are driven by student interest and often initiated by students themselves⁴. Personalized learning technology—like the K-12 learning management system (LMS)—facilitates and empowers these facets of 21st-century education.

How do we select these technology tools? Consider these questions when getting started:

• Does the proposed technology take the focus away from learning or enhance student learning?

• Does the proposed technology integrate with other edtech students and teachers already use?
• Does the proposed technology allow students to work in better or different ways?
• Does the proposed technology empower students?

In other words, navigating your LMS shouldn’t take away from the focus of learning. It should facilitate it. The technology should also allow students to do something different than they would be doing without its use—think redefinition instead of a simple substitution of digital tools for analog ones. The edtech should also put students in control of their own learning.

From that point, you can home in on how you will leverage the technology to prepare students for a digital future. For example, let’s say that you are teaching a lesson on Hamlet. An in-person lesson might feature a standard whole-class read-aloud paired with a follow-up activity. A personalized, tech-enhanced, 21st-century lesson on the melancholy Dane goes further. Students might engage in a think-pair-share activity on Act III, Scene I via FlipGrid. They might create a digital mash-up of Hamlet’s moral conundrum with examples from politics today. Or, they might elect to design and complete their project to relate Shakespeare to the present day. Whatever they elect to create should engage their critical thinking skills. Are they showing initiative and imagination? Are they relating the themes of the 16th and 17th centuries to today’s cultural and political environment? If so, their use of personalized learning technology is helping them meet the digital future head-on.

That’s all pretty highbrow stuff for our purposes. The bottom line is that new skills are needed to prepare students for their digital future, not our analog past. And when you consider how much technology has changed in just the last decade, let alone the 40 years since the personal computing revolution picked up steam and came to the masses, these new skills are equally needed to understand our digital future. So, while we don’t know every aspect of the digital future, we know what it might look and feel like for our students, and we can adequately prepare them for what might await by doing as much as we can to personalize their learning options now.

Personalized Learning Technology

In a personalized learning environment, students learn at a pace and through instructional approaches appropriate for their needs. Learning activities are driven by student interest and often initiated by students themselves⁴. Personalized learning technology—like the K-12 learning management system (LMS)—facilitates and empowers these facets of 21st-century education.

How do we select these technology tools? Consider these questions when getting started:

• Does the proposed technology take the focus away from learning or enhance student learning?

• Does the proposed technology integrate with other edtech students and teachers already use?
• Does the proposed technology allow students to work in better or different ways?
• Does the proposed technology empower students?

In other words, navigating your LMS shouldn’t take away from the focus of learning. It should facilitate it. The technology should also allow students to do something different than they would be doing without its use—think redefinition instead of a simple substitution of digital tools for analog ones. The edtech should also put students in control of their own learning.

From that point, you can home in on how you will leverage the technology to prepare students for a digital future. For example, let’s say that you are teaching a lesson on Hamlet. An in-person lesson might feature a standard whole-class read-aloud paired with a follow-up activity. A personalized, tech-enhanced, 21st-century lesson on the melancholy Dane goes further. Students might engage in a think-pair-share activity on Act III, Scene I via FlipGrid. They might create a digital mash-up of Hamlet’s moral conundrum with examples from politics today. Or, they might elect to design and complete their project to relate Shakespeare to the present day. Whatever they elect to create should engage their critical thinking skills. Are they showing initiative and imagination? Are they relating the themes of the 16th and 17th centuries to today’s cultural and political environment? If so, their use of personalized learning technology is helping them meet the digital future head-on.

Bringing it All Together: The LMS as Your Digital Hub

Your LMS is the center of all personalized learning for your students. Consider online discussions–your LMS is the place where they happen, where students practice digital citizenship skills, critical thinking, and cultural agility with every reply. The LMS is your home base for video conferencing and digital projects. It is the hub from which all digital spokes radiate.

We can teach our students how to navigate the LMS and help them use it to generate their own questions and plan for finding the answers. Then allow the LMS to be the foundation upon which students practice all the skills they need for higher education and beyond. That’s when we have unleashed the promise for their digital futures.

Learning During a Tech Revolution

We don’t always realize how significant the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been in human history because we are living right in the middle of it. It’s hard to see the forest for the trees. We are, however, living in the midst of a revolution, just as significant as the industrial revolution was more than a century ago—and perhaps more so. This revolution requires that we use the technology tools at our disposal to personalize the learning experience for our students and that we empower them to think critically and think like the creators we know they can be.