On Sunday 17 June I’ll be giving a talk at a conference in London, organised by Regent’s University and Trinity College London. Further information about the conference can be found here.
The talk is entitled ‘Personalized learning: the past, present and future of ELT’ and draws heavily on earlier posts on this blog. For anyone attending the talk, here are links to the references I cite along with further reading.
- Personalized learning – attempts to define it and its links to technology: see Personalized learning: Hydra and the power of ambiguity and Evaluating personalization
- Goal-setting and standardization: see Personalization and goal-setting
- Self-pacing and programmed instruction: see Self-paced language learning
- The promotion of personalized learning in ELT: see Personalized learning at IATEFL
Adaptive Learning in ELT 
Hello, I was wondering if you had come across Edusynch. It’s an adaptive platform, based in Brazil that focuses on ETS exams and IELTS. It sells itself as being the answer to the “broken and outdated school system that gives no individualisation”. It sounds like your sort of topic.
I love the way these companies have a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing slogans. Should I really have a look at this? Are you really wishing on me a combination of ‘adaptive’ platform and TOEFL / IELTS? How have I offended you?
Hahaha, yes, that was a particularly evil request when you only ever do good work. I have had a scout around and it looks pretty shoddy, that’s without even considering some of their claims, such as being present in 197 countries or being the answer to bad teaching and bad materials! I’d avoid if I were you, I was just wondering whether you had seen them during your investigations into the field. Thanks, keep up the blog, it’s great!
[…] Personalized learning: the past, present and future of ELT […]
There’s a very useful article called ‘Insights from 200+ Years of Personalized Learning’ available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0033-x