Gone are the days where students were forced to follow the one-size-fits-all educational approach. In this modern era, innovation in technology has changed the learning methods for students. Personalized learning and intelligent high school tutoring are some of the best examples. This not only makes learning fun and easy but also problem-solving-focused to develop students’ cognitive skills. As the world is getting modernized in terms of technology, it sparks the need for practical knowledge rather than solely relying on bookish knowledge to be able to succeed down the line. It’s undeniable that private tutoring from tutoring Liverpool to any other city in the world has its own perks for students who struggle in various subjects, however, other unconventional methods possess extra premium benefits to keep the students moving with the pace of technology.
What is Personalized Learning?
Breaking it down into simpler words, personalized learning means a personal way to learn. It definitely varies from student to student and it is student-centered. Unlike the traditional school learning approach, personalized learning allows the students to drive their own learning.
Such kind of learning is done under the supervision of a teacher, of course, and it’s made sure that all students are being monitored and guided throughout. It requires a teacher to work with students together to set both short- and long-term goals.
The teachers are required to keep a separate file for each student that contains their needs, strengths, motivations, goals, and progress. As opposed to the standard report card, these profiles are kept up to date more often. These goals in the profile are aligned with the student’s performance and achievements. Such profiles help the teacher, student, or even parents to monitor the progress of a student.
Once a skill or knowledge is achieved, the goals of the students are changed and they are then required to work on a new goal. It’s also made sure that the learning plans match up with academic standards.
Advantages of Personalized Learning:
Students work at their own pace. The traditional teaching methods require both fast-learners and slow-learners to learn at the same pace. Slow learners are often left behind in learning new technical concepts. However, personalized learning ensures a student works at their own pace with no pressure. This allows them to grasp complete knowledge of a concept that they may not have learned previously.
Increased engagement between student and teacher. Personalized learning allows both the student and teacher to have close and direct communication. This gives teachers a chance to focus on a student’s weak areas and guide them. While the student can ask questions upfront without having to wait much.
Confidence. As the lessons are customized in personalized learning, the students can gradually gain mastery of certain topics and as they do so they gain confidence in how great and quick learners they are. This allows them to focus more on their next task.
Disadvantages of Personalized Learning:
Teachers may not have enough training. As such kind of learning is quite new to the educational world, the teachers may not be trained well enough. Also, they may not know how to handle an issue or on what basis to track the competencies of students and monitor their progress.
Extra preparation. The teachers might have to put in extra time and effort in order to assess every student’s learning abilities and requirements and check what works best for each student.
What is Intelligent Tutoring?
Intelligent tutoring systems are basically computer systems that use artificial intelligence to provide customized learning and feedback to users. Unlike the personalized learning, intelligent tutoring doesn’t require any human teacher to aid learning.
Intelligent tutoring uses software with multiple exercises that require a student’s input or response. For instance, it will ask you to solve process-based steps in math or science that require you to draw diagrams, define variables, type equations, etc. It will also give you hints during each step. All of this allows the system to assess your learning in each of the steps rather than focusing on the correct answer. After its evaluation, it will create a personalized profile for you and will keep providing you with problems until you have mastered the underlying concepts and skills.
Advantages of Intelligent Tutoring:
Provides instant feedback: Unlike traditional learning, where you have to wait for a teacher to give you feedback. Intelligent tutoring provides instant feedback along with important analytic data to you on the screen for quick understanding.
A more effective approach for struggling learners. It allows the struggling learners to take a more effective approach to learn new concepts by working out the process for themselves while the system only provides hints. It allows them to understand every single step in depth without getting straight to the answer.
Improves learning for shy students. Some students may feel shy or anxious when they have to ask questions from their teacher. This intelligent tutoring system requires no social interaction so students can easily go through a concept over and over again without having to worry about what their teacher is going to “think”.
Disadvantages of Intelligent Tutoring:
Time-consuming to design. Intelligent tutoring requires a lot of time and effort to build because of its complexity, therefore, the free and commercial options are only available for a few universities on their own campuses.
Students may misuse the “hint” option. As this system provides several hints when a student gets a step wrong, this may demotivate them to explore and investigate the problem themselves. Rather than getting an answer right on their own, they may dodge the “hint” system until they get the accurate answer.
Difference between Personalized Learning and Intelligent Tutoring?
In a nutshell, personalized learning provides a customized learning experience for each student based on their needs. The learning objectives, teaching method, and instructional content also vary depending on their needs. However, intelligent tutoring is more problem-based learning. It concerns few exercises and assesses steps of similar difficulty to educate an individual.
