Children come to school with very different needs and abilities, and millions of students struggle with basic reading or math skills. Source<> http://www.edubilla.com/blog/adaptive-learning/

1. Adaptive Learning
Children come to school with very different needs
and abilities, and millions of students struggle with
basic reading or math skills. If teachers had more
time to work with their students one-on-one, they
would learn exactly where each child is having
trouble. Often, that’s not always possible in a typical
classroom setting but this is where adaptive
learning can help.
Based on machine learning and artificial
intelligence technologies, adaptive learning
software can adjust to how students are
performing in real time, changing the education

2. model by anticipating and then delivering the
specific types of learning content that students
need to progress. The software acts like an
intelligent tutor that responds dynamically to each
child’s needs and abilities, supplementing the
instruction that a teacher provides and giving
struggling students the personalized attention they
need to succeed.
Unique Learning Paths for Each Student
The New Media Consortium’s 2015 K-12 Horizon
Report identified adaptive learning as one of the
technologies that’s likely to reach a critical mass of
adoption in K-12 schools within the next few years.
Schools across the globe are increasingly
recognizing that the one-size-fits-all approach to
teaching alienates students who are struggling
with specific concepts — along with students who
are grasping the material more quickly than their
peers, the report says. Teachers rarely have the

3. capacity to design assignments that uniquely cater
to every student and adaptive learning
technologies provide a potential pathway for
tailoring educational opportunities.
Forbes notes one example of this new technology —
McGraw-Hill Education’s ALEKS. This artificially
intelligent software can diagnose precisely what a
student knows and doesn’t know, then create an
appropriate learning path that leads the student
toward a better understanding of the material.
Working on a Chromebook or tablet or another
digital device, students answer free-response
questions that help the program hone in on their
skills. The software then determines what students
already know and what they’re ready to learn next,
and devises unique learning paths for each student,
presenting different content for each child until
they’ve mastered the topic.
Evidence of success with the technology so far
remains largely anecdotal. However, according to

4. EdWeek, a middle school in South Carolina
attributes a rise in student engagement and test
scores to its use of ALEKS — and Slate reports that a
Wisconsin charter school with a focus on STEM
education reportedly had such success with ALEKS
that it even “redirected funding from a full-time
educational position to buy more digital
assessment materials.”
There’s No Replacement for Teachers
As machine learning technologies become more
pervasive in the classroom, Forbes notes that we
will start to see education evolve into a service that
delivers products that not only customize learning,
but also give teachers more insight into student
performance, allowing them to tailor their
instruction more effectively.
The data that comes out of these platforms might
reveal to the teacher or school that a specific
concept isn’t being understood well, says

5. Samantha Adams Becker, senior director of
communications for the New Media Consortium.
That not only enables the platform to serve up
better content, but it helps the humans involved to
design better curriculum or lesson plans based on
how students are performing.
Adaptive learning software is not intended to
replace a teacher; instead, it serves as an extension
of the teacher’s presence in the classroom, while
also helping teachers be more effective when they
are working with students one on one or in small
groups.