As somebody who chose to become an academic, you were probably pretty good at school and enjoyed most of your classes. But there must have been at least one class that didn’t click. Maybe the professor was a bad teacher. Maybe the course was a huge, impersonal lecture. Maybe you just didn’t find the material interesting. Or you struggled with it because it wasn’t in a subject you’re good at. Or there were other things going on in your life that distracted you. Maybe you were just too young or immature to recognize the value of material that you would later grow to appreciate.
At some point, we’ve all been that student in the back row, the one that you recognize as being lost or struggling, bored or tuned out.
If you got through a graduate program and are now working in a college or university, then you must have managed to get past that semester yourself and then found other classes that ignited your passion. Not all students are so lucky. If you had learned to think of yourself as a person who is always one of the students in the back row, then your life might have turned out differently. You may even remember the moment your life changed. Maybe there was one specific class that ignited your passion and put you on the path you’re on today.
It is impossible to reach every student in every class. But every time you manage to reach one of those in the back row, you have a chance to change the course of someone’s life. It may turn out that doing so will change the course of that student’s life in ways that enable her to change other people’s lives. Making that one connection could turn out to be the single most consequential thing you do in your professional life, and one of your more consequential accomplishments as a human being. Those are pretty high stakes. High enough that we should be collecting and sharing methods for reaching students in the back row. And we should have a name for that collection of methods, because naming things makes them easier to talk about.
Phil Hill and I have proposed that we co-opt the term “personalized learning” for this purpose. Nobody is using it for anything useful at the moment. It’s just a label that vendors slap on their products to make them sound more humane, or to be more in fashion with the latest tech lingo. “Personalized learning” is a term that everybody has heard of but nobody knows what it actually means. It’s perfect. Let’s colonize it.
So far, Phil and I have identified three personalized-learning strategies. These are techniques that good teachers have used since the dawn of time. But they have become harder to employ because of the changing nature of schooling — larger class sizes and a more diverse student body, for example. In all three cases, thoughtful use of technology can help us reclaim these strategies and even improve them:
Move content broadcast out of the classroom: In many disciplines, the ideal teaching format is a seminar, in which students spend class time engaged in conversation with a professor. In others, it is a lab. Both models have students actively engaged in academic practice during class time, when the professor, as the expert practitioner, is present to coach them. Every class spent lecturing is a wasted coaching opportunity.
Many disciplines have traditionally used assigned readings to move content broadcast out of the classroom, and some still do. But it is not always possible to find readings that capture what you want to cover, and in any case, it is becoming harder to persuade students to read. Luckily, there are tools that can help with this problem. You can record and post your lectures as videos, which students can watch as many times as they need to absorb what you’re trying to tell them. You can assign podcasts that they can listen to on the go, or find interactive content that keeps them more engaged.
Make homework time contact time: Good teachers help students see the direct connection between the work they do at home and the overall purpose of the class. They do this in a variety of ways. Sometimes they mark up and comment on the student work. Sometimes they ask the students questions in class that require them to build on the work they did at home. For a variety of reasons, which often boil down to professors’ having less available time per student, this has become harder to do. The great crutch that is now being used to limp along without actually solving this problem is robo-graded homework assignments. By itself, automated practice might help some students drag themselves through to the end of the semester. But it doesn’t often inspire them to think that maybe they are not destined to be the student in the back row forever. (There are important exceptions to this rule, which I address below.)
On the other hand, these same automated homework tools can also give teachers an easy view into how their students are doing and create opportunities to engage with those students. “Analytics” in these tools are roughly analogous to your ability to scan the classroom visually and see, at a glance, who is paying attention, who looks confused, who has a question. Nor are these the only tools available for making homework time feel less isolated and pointless. Any homework activity that is done electronically can be socially connected. Group work done on a discussion board can be read over by the professor when she has time. Highlights and marginal notes on readings can be shared and discussed in class. This sort of effort on the professor’s part doesn’t have to be exhaustive (or exhausting). Sometimes a small gesture to show a student that you see her is all it takes.
Hire a tutor: You know what tutors are typically good for in your particular discipline. You also know that there generally aren’t enough good ones available, and that even when there are, it’s tough to get students to come into the tutoring center. One of the best uses of machine-graded homework systems, especially when they are “adaptive,” is to treat them as personal tutors that are available to students whenever they need them and wherever they are. They aren’t perfect, but what tutors are? Sometimes getting students out of the back row means helping them to believe that they are capable of learning. And in some cases, students are willing to pose a question to a computer that they would be embarrassed to ask in person. In those cases, a little extra practice and feedback on the basics, without judgment, can make all the difference — even if the feedback comes from a machine. And if adaptive learning robo-tutors don’t fit the needs of your students and your discipline, technology also makes it possible to connect students with actual human tutors, who are available online to help them get through the rough spots.
None of these techniques by themselves will solve the back- row problem for every teacher or every student. Nor can they be applied mechanically. Teaching is a craft. If “personalized learning” is to mean anything, let it mean a set of tools that you as a craftsperson can employ to help reach some of those students in the back row.
Michael Feldstein is a partner at MindWires Consulting, co-publisher of the e-Literate blog, and co-producer of e-Literate TV.
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