divein coaching

Situated personalization in online learning

29 July 2013

MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses are simply fantastic, and are truly revolutionizing the way people get educated around the world. But as anybody who has taken an online course will tell, there is still a sea of difference between the personalization you get from an in-person coach and a MOOC. While a good in-person coach will make absolutely every advice and suggestion tailored to your needs, in a MOOC everything is impersonal and massified. But does it have to be that way?

Well, since I asked the question you guessed it right that I was probably going to say no, and in fact it doesn't. What follows now is a group of mechanisms by which personalization can occur in an online learning environment.

Just for the sake of example, let's say that I am trying to teach you how to make a research presentation, and that based on my experience as a research coach I know that whether you are an introvert or extrovert will make a significant difference I how I coach you. So, in this example the introvert-extrovert information is what I will use to personalize the course for you in a series of components following Merrienboer's instructional design model:

  1. Supporting information: this is the theory provided to students before they can start working on their tasks. An example of personalization would be to have to sets of slides where presentation techniques explore how well extroverts feel at home when they are the center of attention, while providing relaxation techniques for introverts
  2. Item stem: This is the way the question is formulated in an exercise. For example, exercises focusing on situations that might be problematic for both introverts and extroverts could be explored separately depending on the profile the student might fit in.
  3. Item feedback: This is the feedback saying whether the student might have gotten the item right or wrong, and then providing feedback on why it was wrong and how to fix it. Here the way to fix a wrong answer might be different between an extrover and introvert. For example, while an introvert might want to simply state that he doesn't know but that he can get back to that person later, and extrovert might be encouraged to think on the spot, providing arguments that might lead toward an answer.
  4. Procedural information: These are the SOPs, which Merrienboer recommends should not be provided before the whole task, but just in time. The mechanism here is identical to the feedback, fitting it to the student's characteristics.

by Ricardo Pietrobon

About Me

My name is Ricardo Pietrobon and I am interested in big data and situated cognition applied to immersive distance education.