The hype surrounding adaptive learning results from its potential to modify instruction to meet learners' specific content needs or learning demands.
Among the innovations sweeping across the higher education landscape, adaptive learning may remain one of the least understood and most misrepresented. At the same time, few "true" adaptive learning solutions have achieved meaningful scale of institutional adoption.
(Education Growth Advisors, 2013)
According to Newman (2013), if 2012 was the year of massive open online courses (MOOC) to capture academia, venture capital and unrelenting media coverage, 2013 was a significant year for adaptive learning when a flurry of activities and experimentation related to adaptive learning has been implemented on college and university campuses, thanks to a high-profile, targeted grant program from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The hype surrounding adaptive learning results from its potential to modify instruction at the student's specific content needs or learning demands. Oxman and Wong (2014) argued that some adaptive learning systems can address students' preferences in learning, such as whether they prefer information to be presented in text or audio format, and/or whether students prefer to learn using case studies or multimedia testing tools, etc. In their White Paper, the authors concluded that, adaptive learning has the potential to:
reduce course drop-out rates;
be more effective at achieving outcomes;
be more efficient for students, helping them achieve outcomes faster;
free up faculty to focus on direct assistance where it is needed most.
Given the over-excitement about adaptive learning, especially in the world of technology venture capital and under-research in this field as pointed out by Education Growth Advisors (2013), this proposal aims to identify obstacles to the slow adoption of adaptive learning in the higher educational setting through the perspectives of faculty who attempted using adaptive learning in Blackboard-based online courses at a midsize public university. The proposal will
1) go through an overview of what features Blackboard learning management system can offer in terms of adaptive learning.
2) describe a "hybrid adaptive learning" effort of faculty in the online courses to meet the diverse learning needs and preferences of online adult learners. The term "hybrid adaptive learning" is loosely used to refer to the fact that the course content was tailored and released both automatically via an adaptive release feature in Blackboard LMS and manually by the instructor.
3) provide preliminary findings about learners' attitudes towards taking courses that adaptive learning was included.
4) share lessons learned and experiences gained in designing an adaptive learning-supported online courses.
Reference
Education Growth Advisors (2013). Learning to Adapt: Understanding the Adaptive Learning Supplier Landscape. Retrieved from http://tytonpartners.com/library/understanding-the-adaptive-learning-sup...
Newman, A. (2013). 2013: The Year of Adaptive Learning. Retrieved from http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2013/04/2013-The-Year-of-Adaptiv...
Oxman, S., Wong, W., & Innovations, D. V. X. (2014). White Paper: Adaptive Learning Systems. Snapwiz. Integrated Education Solutions, 1.