Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Weigh an Online Course That Uses Adaptive Learning - Brad Fuster, US News

One challenge for me as a professor when teaching introductory classes is assessing what students already know and what they don't, and then presenting course material in a way that is simultaneously helpful and rigorous. An online course that uses adaptive learning technology may be a great fit, especially for older students with previous work experience. But these classes also have limitations.  Adaptive courses, which are gaining popularity and offered mainly at larger online universities, individually adjust each learner's experience in real time based on the student's progress. For example, a three- to five-minute lecture might explain how to solve a mathematical equation. This lecture is followed by a quiz that presents the student with one problem at a time. A computer program assesses how the student answers each question, and then, based on whether they answered correctly, determines the next question. https://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/articles/2017-09-01/weigh-an-online-course-that-uses-adaptive-learning