Presentation given at a University of London Centre for Distance Education (CDE) workshop to coincide with publication of the paper.

1. Personalised Learning
A Framework for e-Learning
James Ballard
CDE Lunchtime Session

2. Overview
• Background: Personalisation Agenda
• Discussion: Ownership
• A Pedagogy for Personalisation
• A Framework for e-Learning
• What Next?

3. Personalisation
‘The logic of education systems should
be reversed so that it is the
, rather
than the learner to the system. This is
the essence of personalisation’.
Personalisation and Digital Technologies
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/opening_education/Personalisation_report.pdf

4. Consumer Personalisation
Ford McDonalds Amazon
Anything you like We have a
Any colour as as long as it’s on recommendation
long as it’s black the menu for you

5. Personalisation as Choice
Choice of Learning
Choice of Provider Opportunity
(social institution) (learning
experience)
‘Mass customisation’ gives users have a degree
of choice over standardised modules.
‘Personalised timing’ allows individual timings of
a user’s trip through a standard curriculum.

6. Contradictions?
Applying
Values such as
market
self-motivation, Poorly
consumerism
self-regulation, structured
to education Disadvantaged
and choice may
may learners are
educational actively reduce
compromise least likely to
progress, are the scope for
the principles seek help
not equally the collective
of equity on
distributed action
which it is
among cultures
based

7. Personalisation & e-Learning
‘e-learning is
ideally centred on
the set of student
tasks’ Learning activities can be
classified by who is principally
- Carr-Chellman & Duchastel, 2000
directing the activity:
Self-directed
Peer-directed
Teacher-directed
- Biggs, 2003

8. Ownership
Developing empowering cultures requires
skill, thought and a commitment to valuing
and exploring processes,
not just focusing on
the ‘product’
- Haigh, 1999

9. Ownership Matrix

10. Workshop Activity (15mins)
Where does a volcano get its
power?
In groups of 2-3 design a personalised
learning activity for this topic.
Information
Adaptive Assimilative Communicative Experiential Productive
handling
• Modelling • Listening • Debating • Applying • Analysing • Composing
• Simulation • Reading • Discussing • Experiencing • Classifying • Creating
• Viewing • Presenting • Exploring • Gathering • Critiquing
• Investigating • Manipulating • Drawing
• Mimicking • Ordering • Producing
• Performing • Selecting • Re-mixing
• Practising • Synthesising
• Writing
Conole and Fill, 2004

11. 21st Century Learning?
‘It is a world in which knowing what and how to learn the next thing
is as important as what has already been learnt.’
Jackson and Ward, 2004

12. Personalisation

13. Personalised e-Learning
2009 – Discourse based framework
Professional National
Assessment
Portfolio VLE Institutional
PLP
Portal
Social Personal

14. Implications
• Data integration and user interaction with choice must be accessible;
Data
• The framework should seek to optimise needs-satisfaction rather than offer
Integration choice for its own sake;
• The framework must facilitate communication and collaboration, not for
Collaboration
their own sake but in the context of learning dialogues
• The framework must allow appropriate expression of spontaneous and
scientific concepts with both seen as aspects of the same developmental
Independence process
• The framework should emphasise the importance of the self and capable
Assessment
peer as an assessment parameter.

15. Process and Ownership
Complexity Matrix - Process Customisation Matrix - Ownership
Stacey, 2002 Gilmore and Pine, 1997

16. Assessing learners’ achievement
and learning needs
Assessment Approaches E-Assessment Pyramid
Martin, 2008

17. Expanding the Framework
VLE
Supports instructional delivery with rational process monitored against well defined
learning outcomes. Dynamic assessment identifies learning needs and transparent
customisation allows the teacher to differentiate activities to meet these needs and
account for different learning styles.
Individual Learning Plan (ILP)
Formative assessment tool providing scaffolding to heighten learner awareness.
Dialogue creates shared vision for future development which can only be judged in
relation to that vision. Adaptive customisation affords learners standard tools (e.g.
target setting, progress review, etc.) to create a unique learning path.
E-Assessment
Summative assessment requires objective progress against standardised external
criteria. This process is political with outcomes requiring negotiation to ensure they
are shared by the learner. Customisation is cosmetic where the same product may
be presented in different ways but is not fundamentally altered.
E-Portfolio
A collaborative space where learners participate in the design stage exploring ideas
involving complex processes representing creativity, reflection, and new modes of
operating. The portfolio assessment framework is useful for transdisciplinary
projects such as enquiry based learning

18. A Framework for e-Learning
Tool Process Ownership Assessment
(Decision Making) (Customisation)
VLE Rational Transparent Dynamic
E-PLP Judgemental Adaptive Formative
E-Assessment Political Cosmetic Summative
E-Portofolio Complex Collaborative Portfolio

19. A Framework for e-Learning
Transformative?

20. Conclusion
• Personalised learning may provide the context
for assessing the capabilities of e-learning
systems
• The framework does not proscribe particular
software but instead positions technology as a
cultural tool representative of complex processes