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Designing Personalized Learning Experiences
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Designing Personalized Learning Experiences

A Framework for Higher Education and Workforce Training

Nada Dabbagh and Helen Fake
Routledge, 2023

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Most global workforce employees will need new skills in the coming years; acquiring those skills requires personalized learning. Learning technology professors Nada Dabbagh and Helen Fake address the challenges of engaging employees in training and development even as corporate training budgets remain substantial. Dabbagh and Fake’s strategies and guidance focus on improving personalized learning to boost talent development and retention, and on ensuring that organizations and individuals can adapt to evolving skill requirements.

Summary

Technology has transformed personalized learning. 

Personalized learning began with John Dewey, a prominent educational philosopher. Helen Parkhurst put his student-centered learning ideas into practice in the early 1900s through the Dalton Plan, which sought to make learning personal. One method was the learner-mentor model, where learners learn from coaches and learner content.

The Dalton Plan gained popularity internationally, but critics regarded it as resource-intensive. Many regarded its approach as unscalable. To address the scalability problem, researchers Sidney L. Pressey and B.F. Skinner developed teaching machines in the 1920s that provided immediate feedback and allowed students to learn at their own pace.

Pressey and Skinner’s innovations led to electronic-based teaching systems. The PLATO Project, for example, emerged in the 1960s as the first generalized Computer Assisted Instruction system. It offered personalized learning features, but proved expensive.

System-based approaches can scale, but may be resource-intensive. Learner-based methods offer flexibility but demand self-direction. Designing effective personalized...

About the Authors

Nada Dabbagh and Helen Fake are professors in learning technologies at George Mason University.

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