The document discusses the differences between personal and personalized learning. Personalized learning involves tailoring education for individual learners, but the learner has little control over their path. Personal learning empowers the learner to control what, how, and where they learn based on their own needs and interests. It argues that for learners to become truly effective, they must be able to learn independently by finding their own resources and curriculum outside of formal education systems. Teachers have an important role in cultivating curious, independent learners through feedback loops and guidance.

1. Dr. Ebba
Ossiannilsson
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

2. Personal and Personalized
Learning, what do we really
mean by this?
Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson
EDEN FELLOW
OPEN EDUCATION FELLOW
Senior Consultant
V President Swedish Association for Distance Education
E-learning Quality Expert
EADTU and ICDE Quality reviewer,E-learning and MOOCs
May 15th 2016

3. Why education need to change
• Levels of disengagement
• Today’s complex world needs students who are capable in different
ways
• To meet future skill needs and a recognition that we need students
with a different set of capabilities.
• Creativity expert Ken Robinson became a TED-talk phenomenon as a
result of his savage critique of assembly-line schooling. He called for a
radical rethink of the school system so that it nurtures, rather than
undermines, creativity.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

4. We are all Collaborators
• Education professor John Hattie reminds us that:
• “the biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become
learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own
teachers”.
• In other words, what’s needed is a rethinking of roles for teachers and
students.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

5. What if young people designed their
own learning?
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

6. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

7. S Downes (2016)
•”We hear the phrase ‘personalized learning’ a lot
these days, so much so that it has begun to lose
its meaning. Wikipedia tells us that it is the
“tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning
environments by learners or for learners in order
to meet their different learning needs and
aspirations.””
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

8. S Downes
• Even this short definition provides us with several dimensions across which
personalization may be defined. Each of these has been the subject of considerable
debate in the field:
• Pedagogy – do we need to differentiate instruction according to student variables or
‘learning styles’, or is this all a big myth?
• Curriculum – should students study the same subjects in the same order, beginning with
‘foundational’ subjects such as reading or mathematics, or can we vary this order for
different students?
• Learning environments – should students work in groups in a collaborative classroom, or
can they learn on their own at home or with a computer?
• In personalized learning today, the idea is to enable technology to make many of these
decisions for us. For example, adaptive learning entails the presentation of different
course content based on a student’s prior experience or performance in learning tasks.
• What these approaches have in common, though, is that in all cases learning is
something that is provided to the learner by some educational system, whether it be a
school and a teacher, or a computer and adaptive learning software.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

9. S Downes
• But the question is whether we should apply these methods, for two reasons.
• First, individual variability outweighs statistical significance. We see this in
medicine. While, statistically, a certain treatment might make the most sense, no
doctor would prescribe such a treatment without first assessing the individual
and making sure that the generalization actually applies, because in many cases it
doesn’t, and the doctor is sworn to ‘do no harm’.
• Second, and perhaps more importantly, it shouldn’t be up to the education
system to determine what a person learns, how they learn it, and where. Many
factors go into such decisions: individual preferences, social and parental
expectations, availability of resources, or employability and future prospects. The
best educational outcome isn’t necessarily the best outcome
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

10. S Downes
• In the case of personal learning, the role of the educational system is not to
provide learning, it is to support learning. Meanwhile, the decisions about
what to learn, how to learn, and where to learn are made outside the
educational system, and principally, by the individual learners themselves.
• Personal learning often begins informally, on an ad hoc basis, driven by the
need to complete some task or achieve some objective. The learning is a
means to an end, rather than the end in itself. Curricula and pedagogy are
selected pragmatically. If the need is short term and urgent, a simple
learning resource may be provided. If the person wants to understand at a
deep level, then a course might be the best option.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

11. S Downes
• Personalized learning is like
being served at a restaurant.
Someone else selects the food
and prepares it. There is some
customization – you can tell the
waiter how you want your meat
cooked – but essentially
everyone at the restaurant gets
the same experience.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

12. S Downes
• Personal learning is like shopping
at a grocery store. You need to
assemble the ingredients
yourself and create your own
meals. It’s harder, but it’s a lot
cheaper, and you can have an
endless variety of meals. Sure,
you might not get the best meals
possible, but you control the
experience, and you control the
outcome.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

13. S Downes
• Ultimately, if people are to
become effective learners, they
need to be able to learn on their
own. They need to be able to
find the resources they need,
assemble their own curriculum,
and forge their own learning
path. They will not be able to
rely on education providers,
because their needs are too
many and too varied.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

14. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

15. Bag Packers
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

16. Learning happens in the cracks between everything else that is going on in formal education systems,
so we have to make sure that those cracks/spaces are there (Downes, Keynote presentation delivered to
Educational Technology Summit, Istanbul, Turkey, slide 14 2016).MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

17. D Cormier
• The Society is the curricula
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

18. Linear vs Rhizomatic learning
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

19. 21st century Skills
•Read, Write, Connect
•Learn, Reflect, Share
•Do, Teach, Watch
•Present, Document, Disseminate
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

20. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

21. 21st Century Skills
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

22. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

23. www2.hcs.sa.edu.au
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

24. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

25. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

26. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

27. Teachers need to strike the balance between
encouraging independent learning and providing
students with guidance. They have a key role in
cultivating confident, curious learners who can take
risks and learn from their mistakes.
Feedback loops are critical, with students and
teachers providing regular feedback to each other
to achieve quality learning.
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

28. Challenges ahead
• Unbundling
• Leadership
• Re-think, re-shape, re….almost everything
• Glocalisation
• Let the learners orchestra their own learning
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

29. MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization

30. Caring is sharing, sharing is caring
My Footprints
MoodleMooc8_Ossiannilsson_Personal vs Personalization