WHY is there still a disparity in our educational results?

Why do we find some ‘weak ones’ or ‘slow pokes’?

Sounds disturbing, right? Well, this is an underlying reality noticed everywhere. Slow learners are found in most of the schools across the country. Therefore, teachers are  struggling to make things simpler for them through various means.

Considering the plight of the students and the objective to optimize the teaching efforts,  educational researchers are taking new approaches to tackle the challenges. This gave rise to a new pattern of teaching where they decided to isolate the problem by working on one-on-one sessions, developed as personalized learning.

Personalized learning helps students  with customized solution for easy understanding, and to practicefor elevating their confidence.

Understanding the Need

“When a student is ready, the teacher appears,”sounds interesting and inspiring. However, in certain cases, the teacher has to make the student aware of the subject, help them understand get the practice done and check their-developing skills.

Personalized learning identifies the students’ skills, interests, strengths, and core areas. Once identified, the teacher customizes a pattern of the learning module for the students based on their  understanding and learning pattern.

In the personalized learning process, a thorough study is made of the students’ capabilities, knowledge, and areas of  interest. Based on these, a connection is created that links the new topics of learning with their existing strengths,helping  students identify the new things, take interest and  learn steadily.

This brings  clarity and accountability to the progress of the learners. The uncertainty of mass education is reduced here as it provides a scope for clear communication, better understanding, and direction to the learning process.

How It Actually Works

With continuity in the learning, the students develop a liking for the subject and get used to the process. Personalized learning motivates the students to learn better, practice more often and correlate the purpose of learning through a meaningful methodology.

Learning is made simplified by dividing the subjects into smaller units. Each unit is customized in easy steps with examples and points of quick understanding. When the student learns in this way, it creates a small step of steady understanding helping the student study further with correlation and identification.

This link of positive points gradually  helps in the learning process and nurtures a lasting interest in studying further.

Personalized learning plays the role of a gamechanger in bringing the student on the learning track, building up an excellent consistency of thoughts, practice, and recapitulation.

Amazing Benefits

Personalized learning offers numerous benefits to both the students and the teachers due to its focused and customized methods.

• Helps develop understanding.
• Brings
• Instills an interest to learn.
• Boosts valuable self-confidence.
• Gradually improves the grades or results.
• Enhances knowledge developing abilities.
• Increases engagement.
• Saves Time.
• Better control to the teachers.
• Customization focuses on Core Issues.
• Reduces or nullifies unhealthy comparison.

Types of Personalized Learning

Personalized learning helps the teacher identify the learner’s understanding process and accordingly customize a learning approach for him.

Some of the various learning approaches prevalent are mentioned as follows.

• One-on-one teaching
• Online education
• Direct mentoring
• Corporate training approach
• Using search engines
• Fun and learn method
• DIY method
• ‘Treasure Hunt game’ idea

Towards a Hopeful and Confident Future

Personalized learning has brought in an interesting ray of hope for slow learners. It has created numerous ways and means to equip the teachers in bringing noticeable improvements to the students. The basic idea of instilling  hope, removing  fear, and showing the direction of opportunities becomes an important factor.

With the advances in the personalized learning methodology, the teachers are in a better position to identify the right teaching approach and  prepare the student accordingly. More research is being made in this process, the future of students will be definitely bright and full of possibilities in bringing in clarity, understanding, and boosting valuable self-confidence.

• Kedar Borgaonkar