What do we really mean by personalised learning?

Everyone’s talking about personalised learning. It seems obvious that technology ought to be opening up new possibilities for ever better personalisation. However, look a bit closer and it’s clear that there’s no consensus about what personalisation really means.

Looking at the providers who are offering personalised learning, the differences become evident. Some are talking about changing the look and feel of the learning interface, perhaps allowing learners to decide what items to include in their home page summary, or changing the colour scheme. Others are talking about allowing the learner to identify areas they are interested in, so that a particular learning system can offer relevant content. Another group talks about using patterns of previous behaviour to predict what might be of interest. One content creation company uses the word ‘personalisation’ to describe a learning experience that includes branching scenarios. These learning providers all have very different views of what they meant by personalisation.