Teaching although considered as a profession would have more weight if it is also considered as a craft. Most of the inspiring educators that I know of would always strive to be ten or more steps ahead of their students but at the same time be very much open to learning things from their students. In a perfect world, every class design will work because every educator would have ample time to prepare, plan and understand their learners’ capacity in the field that they are teaching.

Educators may always be pitted against technology and the environments that it creates for our learners but just like what I have mentioned in my earlier papers, educators are still the facilitators of learning and technology can be used as a tool to various possibilities in learning, even our very own utopia. An educator’s utopia would probably be to have an environment that can support his/her vision to ensure that the learners get the most out of their sessions or classes together. Personalized learning, as a breakaway from the concept of adaptive learning , allows learning to be “individualized according to each student's strengths, tendencies and temperaments, while they continue to work collaboratively in a social context” (HundrED Organization, 2020). According to HundrED Organization based in Finland, it is their version of “flipped” learning that facilitates students’ learning based on their motivation, autonomy, ability and relevance of the learning to the said students.

Personalized learning paths is one of the most essential of this method since consumption or production of knowledge greatly depends on where the students will begin. They also give emphasis on the importance of recursive feedback from multiple sources and clear setting of goals. Their initiatives towards personalized learning is supported by infrastructures in educational technology. This is where we usually find ourselves conflicted and challenged of how we can achieve praxis. We are so keen on using these tools but at the same time we are skeptics of the quality of learning that we deliver as educators.

This is where we must revisit our notions of praxis and invest on how we teach as a practice and how our education systems works as an integral part of our communities. Just as we shift from knowledge consumption to knowledge production, we also have to keep in mind our shift in our roles as educators. Gone are the days where we see professors as gatekeepers of learners’ future careers but let’s rather take on the roles of mentors for the citizens of our communities. With information that are available to our students 24/7, how can we make them more critical of the information that they consume and customize or produce new artifacts based on this acquired information. In a sense, personalized learning also means collaborative teaching. It is also asking us as educators to design and facilitate learning in collaboration with our colleagues, students and learners.

Finding harmony amongst these stakeholders to achieve personalized learning and collaborative teaching is where e-learning environments can play a huge part. It has the capacity to bridge distances and provide multitudes of possibilities in terms of methods, designs and delivery. Maybe the educator’s utopia isn’t about our learners’ progress alone but also about allowing ourselves as educators to learn from the process.

Works Cited

HundrED Organization. (2020). Personalized Learning. Retrieved from HundrED.Org: https://hundred.org/en/innovations/personalized-learning-paths