We all know those tapes with someone talking and the listener repeating and that way learning a new language. This is just an example to point out that educational technology is nothing new. You chose a language and with the appropriate hardware you could play those tapes and thus, at least in theory, learn it without the need of being physically present in a classroom. E-learning is part of educational technology and I will tackle the trend personalized e-learning by linking it with concepts and technologies.

Personalised e-learning

First, let us take a closer look and try to describe what personalized e-learning is about. Then we will focus on certain topics that will fuel this concept in 2016.

It’s not easy to give a correct description of this term. When we think about personalization, we will probably come up with the easiest and clearest way of defining it: ‘making changes’ and ‘choosing what you want’. When we translate this to the e-learning environment, we talk about customizing the lay-out, more specifically how the course is presented to you in all of its aspects and the topics you want to study.

Another way to define the term ‘personalization’ is just by looking at what happens when we visit a certain website. On most websites they know exactly what you’re doing, everything is measured and you receive a so called cookie. Based on your behaviour, it’s possible that you will see the website a bit differently than your friend. Think about targeted news stories popping up, recommendations on YouTube and ads appearing on Facebook. They know about your behaviour, your interests and profile type and are using all of that data to give you the best experience possible.

It’s no surprise that ‘Big data’ is popping up now. Big data has become a very popular term and the strength of it isn’t just collecting a bunch of data, but handling it effectively. How can we get the most out of it? How can we give our users the best possible experience and lead them to the things they will benefit from and are interested in? I will discuss Big data in personalized e-learning further on, but it’s clear that ‘presenting the right courses’ is part of this.

And last but not least, there are things to facilitate personalized e-learning, technologies giving it another dimension or making it easier to study on the go, where you want, whenever you want.

MOOCs and Belgium

MOOCs are massive open online courses, think about a topic like biology and 50,000 people registering to follow the lessons provided by MIT. You have a long list of options now, so it’s becoming easier to choose the topics you want to study.

According to Wikipedia MOOCs were first introduced in 2008 and became popular as a distance education method in 2012. There are a lot of platforms and I won’t give a full list here, but think of Udacity, FutureLearn, Coursera and edX. Thanks to platforms like Coursera it’s possible to search for a certain topic you’re interested in, to enrol (and on Coursera to pay, this is for instance not the case for FutureLearn) and to learn whenever you want.

Gene R. Springs and Robert Zemsky are critical about MOOCs with the latter bluntly saying:

They came; they conquered very little; and now they face substantially diminished prospects.

In his work Sustaining Hype? MOOCs and Open Access Course Materials Gene R. Springs wrote that the hype surrounding MOOCs as a major disruptor in higher education has calmed down considerably.

So what about Belgium (my country)? Well, we’re a bit behind.

Despite criticism from people like Zemsky or Springs, the Ku Leuven in Belgium launched its first MOOC on edX. The institution described it as an upcoming trend. UCL started with 4 MOOCs in February 2014, and reported this year that they were good for more than 50,000 enrolments. UCL called it a success and have expanded their courses to 13, offering topics on international human rights, the principles of finance and politics in 2016. Belgium is running behind, so expect a close look and more initiatives from universities and the Belgian students becoming more familiar with this concept in 2016.

Skill training

Coming back to the criticism of Zemsky and Springs and the latter saying that the hype from MOOCs as a disruptor for higher education is diminishing, one can fairly pop the question if this is what MOOCs ultimately want to achieve.

Do students or people in general want the e-learning experience to be as close as possible to the offline experience of a university? A good example here is Udemy, unlike the more traditional collegiate courseworks, Udemy provides a platform for experts of any kind to create courses which can be offered to the public. While it might seem nice to say that you’re studying ‘Economics of competing energy technologies’ from Stanford University, you can ask yourself if this is relevant and if you gain a certain skill by doing this?

If you visit Udemy, the first thing you see is: “What course will your life take? Own your future by learning new skills online.” There are courses on virtually anything they say, if you take a quick look you’ll see titles like: The complete iOS 9 developer course, your complete guide to photography, Microsoft Excel Advanced Training and so on. You can now give your future a whole new twist and personalize it by personalizing your e-learning.

In June this year Udemy raised an additional $65 million from investors. This was the most they’ve raised since 2010 and confirms a reliance in this industry and that skill learning will continue to grow in 2016, again serving the personalization of e-learning. Besides Udemy, you have sites like Skillshare, CreativeLive and Lynda.com.

Social learning

Social media are still growing. Statistics provided by ‘wearesocial’ from August 2015 are showing that there are 2.2 billion active social media users, a growth of 8.7% from last year. Facebook is undoubtedly the biggest platform with 1.5 billion users. On 27th August Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his timeline:

“We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.”

So there are a lot of people across several platforms with the potential to share and learn from each other and rest assure, this will still grow in 2016.

According to ‘24x7 Learning’ social interactions play a key role in confidence, motivation, engagement and willingness to engage in learning. E-learning platform FutureLearn is taking this social learning to heart by giving the possibility to have a conversation with students and tutors on every step of a course. You can find comments with links providing more info about a certain topic, think about a useful site, an article on LinkedIn or a YouTube video. Most of the times they give you a certain hashtag for a course and that way you can engage on social media. You can then follow educators and those interesting student profiles and personalize your learning path.

mLearning

We are using smartphones more and more. Last year, Google announced that people were searching more on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan. This offers a set of new opportunities in different industries. Nowadays, almost everybody has a smartphone and we’re connected most of the time. A survey conducted by Pew Research Center showed that teens ages 13 to 17 in the US are going online frequently. 92% of them reported going online daily with 24% saying they’re almost constantly connected.

We have mobile devices with us on the go and it’s therefore possible to access the knowledge pool at all times and places. Justin Ferriman wrote on ‘learndash’ that geo-location is another example of smartphones providing a new experience in e-learning. This technology can detect when and where someone is while taking training and therefore it’s possible to design the mobile learning in a way that is more relevant to the person’s cultural environment.

Looking at the mobile app from Udemy and the way they promote it on their website, you can see that they are stressing the fact that every course is available on demand, 24/7. They’re writing: “With the Udemy app, you can squeeze in a few lectures on your commute. Or before bed. Or during lunch. Or just whenever you can find the time.” It’s possible to save courses for offline viewing as well, so you can learn on a plane or subway without a hassle.

Mobile devices make it possible to strengthen the personalization of e-learning and we will see this intensified this year.

Big Data and adaptive learning

uring an e-learning course you leave a trace of your progress and success. This is not different from other sites as I already mentioned here, everything you do online is tracked. By following a student, it’s possible to get a lot of information which can then be analysed. You get insights and are able to forecast what works and not and the system can tell when somebody needs assistance or support. By collecting data, you can create an environment of adaptive learning. Adaptive learning is part of the personalization story, it’s an educational method where the presentations are adapted according to the students’ learning needs.

Let’s quickly examine DreamBox and Knewton. Both are online learning environments, the former focuses on mathematics education at the elementary and middle school level, the latter allows schools, publishers and developers to provide adaptive learning for any student. In an article on The Huffington Post author Tom Vander Ark wrote about his experience visiting DreamBox and said (in 2012) that they evaluate an average of 48,000 data points per hour for every student to customize the learning experience.

Studying at Knewton is like “having the world’s smartest tutor at your fingertips”. It sounds impressive when you read that Knewton bundles the best pieces of content for each student into uniquely personalized lessons that update in real time. That the platform recommends the exact content and learning strategy that’s most effectively improved outcomes for similar students and that it works better each time a student uses it.

Big data and using it effectively to personalize learning will become more important in 2016 and we should see e-learning platforms adopt this (even) more.

Virtual and augmented reality

VR and AR have the potential to disrupt a lot of industries. In 2016 some hyped devices will come to the market: Oculus Rift (Q1 2016), HTC Vive (full launch in Q1 2016) Project Morpheus from PlayStation (Q1 2016) and Microsoft HoloLens (Q1 2016). Think about a new way of shopping, training, gaming, and so on.

To prove that it can be a catalyst for personalized e-learning, I would like to take the example of Microsoft HoloLens. They partnered with car maker Volvo and in an impressive video Microsoft showed that the consumer can explore the colours, rims or get a better understanding of the different features, services and options available for the car. Basically, when you have the HoloLens on, you augment the real world with virtual content. So, it’s not hard to imagine that you can use it to get lessons on car manufacturing or closet assembly and perform the actions in real-time.

There is a sample video on YouTube with a simulation that takes the learner through a step by step approach in dealing with an office fire and you can use the Oculus Rift to learn about these steps and get a better understanding when the situation would occur in real life.

There will be a lot of testing and there’s a huge potential for e-learning with VR and AR in 2016.

Conclusion

Personalization is essential because every student is different and need another approach. It must take into account all requirements, objectives and learning abilities of an individual and that’s where big data comes in hand to ultimately create an adaptive learning environment.

Thanks to MOOC platforms we’ve seen that it’s easier than ever to pick the courses you want to study. It’s not necessary to have a traditional collegiate coursework, platforms like Udemy proved that a lot of people want to start learning specific skills and social media can help facilitate the learning process.

Technology like mobile devices and virtual and augmented reality can put personalized e-learning in a new perspective. Lastly, I would like to emphasize that the e-learning market also includes learning management systems, platforms to suit the online corporate training needs of a company.

According to a report from Docebo it’s estimated that the market for self-paced e-learning will reach some $52 billion in revenue next year. 2016 will be an exciting time for personalized e-learning in different domains.