Twelfth International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract

How could we change our teaching practices so that the learning environment was not something imposed upon students, but rather learning was situated as an active construction of learners with their facilitators? This question was particularly important to us because we teach future educators (K-12 teachers, librarians) who model the kind of instruction that they have been exposed to in their own teaching environments. To answer the question, we turned to Personalized Learning (PL), a pedagogical approach being experimented with in K-12 schools across the United States, but which has yet to really infiltrate higher education. PL respects learner voice, promotes choice, fosters metacognition, and inculcates the core belief that all students are capable of mastery. In this session we will introduce the core tenets of PL and present examples from our experimentations with it (10 minutes), then facilitate a PL experience for participants themselves (30-35 minutes). This latter, interactive experience will model PL features by providing participants with different pathways for its exploration along K-12 or higher education lines and then will support participants in beginning to re-design a learning experience of their choice with PL elements using worksheets, an online learning site, and small group work led by the presenters. We will also introduce technology that can be used to support various PL elements and will provide participants opportunity during re-design to experiment with those technologies (e.g. GoFormative, FlipGrid, NearPod, edPuzzle, and other playlist curation sites for videos and podcasts).