Personalisation and digital technologies

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/opening_education_reports/Opening_Education_Report201/

Hannah Green, Demos Keri Facer and Tim Rudd, Futurelab Patrick Dillon, University of Exeter Peter Humphreys, Personalise Education Now

The full version of this report is available to download in pdf format - see box below. Please note that you can also order a free hard copy of the Learner"s Charter only. On this page you"ll find the report"s introduction, as well as some of the useful links listed at the end (skip down to links).

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The Learner』s Charter for a personalised learning environment (pdf, 75KB)

This report draws upon a series of seminars held by Futurelab, Demos, Becta and Toshiba between December 2004 and February 2005. The participants and speakers helped to inform and stimulate our thinking and a steering group of colleagues representing a variety of interests and organisations refined and challenged our conclusions. See Personalisation seminar series for more details.

The logic of education systems should be reversed so that it is the system that conforms to the learner, rather than the learner to the system. This is the essence of personalisation. It demands a system capable of offering bespoke support for each individual that recognises and builds upon their diverse strengths, interests, abilities and needs in order to foster engaged and independent learners able to reach their full potential.

This challenge has generated much debate as people explore how to respond, both intellectually and practically. For many teachers, the idea of personalisation is familiar and is one of the ideals that brought them into the profession. However, at times, the assessment, funding and institutional contexts in which they operate act not as a driving force for personalisation but as a barrier to it. Personalisation asks us how these systems can be re-shaped around the needs of the learner.

This paper aims to contribute to this debate by articulating a range of ways in which we might move forward in achieving these goals, specifically by harnessing the potential of digital technologies in four key areas central to the goals of personalisation: enabling learners to make informed educational choices; diversifying and acknowledging different forms of skills and knowledge; the creation of diverse learning environments; and the development of learner-focused forms of assessment and feedback.

This paper is not attempting to predict the future - either in terms of educational systems or the digital tools that might emerge to support them - but to outline clearly a set of challenges and opportunities that might form the basis for dialogue about a personalised learning landscape and the role of digital resources in enabling and shaping this arena. In this way it aims to contribute directly to the debates emerging from, for example, the DfES e-Strategy and Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners[1] which prioritise the development of personalised, collaborative learning spaces.

Useful links

The Children"s Research Centre, at the Open University, aims to empower children and young people as active researchers, viewing children as experts on their own lives, and promoting child voice by supporting children to carry out research on topics that are important to them. childrens-research-centre.open.ac.uk

The E-Scape Project is a research and development project for the DfES and the QCA exploring innovative forms of assessment for creativity and invention in design and technology with particular relevance to the use of PDAs. www.qca.org.uk/14828.html

The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory from the University of Bristol and the Lifelong Learning Foundation is a self-report questionnaire designed to find out how learners perceive themselves in relation to the key dimensions of learning power. www.ellionline.co.uk

The English Secondary Students" Association (ESSA) aims to provide training, guidance and advice to empower students and equip them with the vital skills needed to become actively involved in the decision-making processes in their own school communities; and it aims to work in partnership with other organisations to bring the views of secondary school students to the attention of local and national policy makers, as well as the media, in relation to educational issues. www.studentvoice.co.uk

Motivate is a video-conferencing project linking world-class mathematicians with primary and secondary students. motivate.maths.org/index.php

Notschool.net is an online research project looking at ways of re-engaging young people of school age back into learning. These young people have been out of the more traditional educational systems for a variety of personal and logistical reasons. www.notschool.net/ns/template.php

Pensnett School of Technology, Internal Strategy Document, 2004. For more information please contact Sue Baines at enqs@pensnett.dudley.gov.uk or on 01384 816435.

Personalised Education Now seeks to develop a rich, diverse, funded Personalised Educational Landscape to meet the learning needs, lifestyles and life choices made by individuals, families and communities. It promotes education based on learner-managed learning, using a flexible catalogue curriculum, located in a variety of settings, and operating within a framework of democratic values and practices. c.person.ed.gn.apc.org

Real is a lifelong learning project bringing together free and online learning focused around subjects seen by learners as useful. www.intoreal.com

The RSA"s Opening Minds Project is a philosophy, a project and a report. It sprang from a conviction that the way young people are being educated was becoming increasingly distanced from their, and the country"s, real needs and has developed an approach to the organisation and practice of education that focuses on the development of 21st century competencies. www.thersa.org/newcurriculum

The Virtual-Workspace is a joint initiative by Worcestershire and Wolverhampton LEAs developed by NordAnglia. It brings together 21,000 children through an e-learning portal which enables them to create their own learning communities, access diverse resources and develop their own individual learning plans. www.virtual-workspace.com

1. DFES 5 year strategy: www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/5yearstrategy; DFES E-strategy: www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy

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