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.

And is personalisation really the right word for some of these? Maybe changing the look and feel of the learning interface is really customisation rather than personalisation? And maybe the branching scenario is closer to gamification than personalisation. After all, everyone gets the same options. They just make different choices. So, if the word ‘personalisation’ is being used too broadly, is it actually describing what we’d really want it to mean? In this increasingly sophisticated learning ecosystem, what would we ideally want from personalisation? Let’s be really ambitious. Wouldn’t the best conceivable personalisation ensure that each of us learned exactly what we needed?

When it comes to management and leadership skills, personalisation should certainly mean fitting our learning to suit our personality. A dominant manager needs to think about how to let others contribute. An easy going leader needs to ensure he or she is monitoring progress and holding people to account. It’s imperative that they each get the message that’s right for them. If the messages are swapped, the dominant manager risks becoming more dominant while the easy going leader becomes more easy going, the complete opposite of what they and their teams really need.

We now have the technology to provide real personalisation, taking into account people’s personalities, preferences, experience and aptitude. It’s not simple. Each person is unique, so a personalised leadership development platform should cater for millions or billions of variations. It sounds like the future, but it’s already here. At Aptimore we’ve used our extensive experience of assessing and developing people to create a platform that not only trains people but also offers feedback and action steps tailored to the profile of each learner. There are many billions of different possible feedback patterns. Our personalisation ensures that people get the messages that are right for them, so that they can become better team players and more effective managers and leaders. 

For more information about Aptimore's personalised online learning platform, click here. Alternatively, Contact: Katy Lindsay -[email protected].