Disclaimer: UK based teacher here not an IT specialist About 15 years or so ago there was a slogan in colleges in the UK about 'personalised learning'. People

Disclaimer: UK based teacher here not an IT specialist About 15 years or so ago there was a slogan in colleges in the UK about 'personalised learning'. People sat in meetings and agreed that learning should indeed be personalised. I used to ask questions like how do I personalise learning with 25 teenagers in a basic maths class at 2pm on Friday.... no answers. The phrase 'personalised learning' had no 'operational' definition. It meant anything the middle managers and inspectors wanted it to mean. A buzz word if you like. I think the point the OA was making was that writing software to deliver things forces precise operationalised meanings for things - you can't write code if you don't know what the output is supposed to be. Below is teaching stuff... Obviously at 2pm on Friday you present to the median in the room and then keep the more confident going with harder tasks during the individual work bit of the lesson and give the dazed and confused more structured skills based work, that is basic teaching practice. I always got the students to fill in a learning log (piece of paper) at the end of the lesson - a line on the log for date, 'what did I learn today'(1) and comments. Turned out that was fine! I was officially doing 'personalised learning'. Who knew? A well known elearning provider in the UK took the 'personalised learning' slogan more seriously than I did and produced the following... * Screen based MCQ diagnostic quizzes on Maths and English - carefully designed questions with good feedback on distractors - the quality of this stage is absolutely critical * Tests were adaptive so if a student got a lot of questions wrong on (say) percentages, they got easier ones, and if most answers correct they got harder ones * Results logged against micro-topics. After test completed, student got an 'individual learning plan' with links to screen based materials. The 'learning plan' could be printed out and had enough detail to allow a teacher to run coaching sessions for that student. The linked learning materials were an add-on product. The diagnostic component is widely used in colleges in the UK. The learning plan bit is an add-on not so widely used. I used it and had good results with the students who don't like sitting in classrooms. (1) one lad put 'I learned how to sleep with my eyes open'. He'll go far I think.