Technology-enhanced Personalised Learning In Schools

Overview

The Technology-enhanced Personalised Learning (TEPL) project was set up to produce a report, based on a systematic survey of technology-enhanced personalised learning from around the world, with the aim of helping German educators and policy makers make good informed decisions about how best to personalise learning in German schools.

Personalised learning has been defined as “learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic support strategies intended to address the specific learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students”, which usually involve a shift from knowledge transmission towards competence- or skills-based learning strategies. In fact, personalisation in classrooms is a long-established tenet of good teaching. But whether or not technology can help deliver personalised learning in the classroom remains an open but important question.

There is much promising evidence. However, TEPL is going beyond the face-value of that evidence (which all too often can be uncritically positive), by undertaking a critical appraisal of the examples that are uncovered, questioning the assumptions on which those examples are based, and beginning with questions centred on the efficacy of personalised learning itself. Working with colleagues from Berlin, the project is also contextualising those examples and assessing how feasible and how effective they might be implemented in the German education system.

The project is funded by a consortium of German charitable foundations, led by Robert Bosch Stiftung.