March 2016 - some dead links, I am afraid. Seb.
.Readers in England with an interest in FE will know that on 27/3/2006 the Government published a White Paper on the reform of the Further Education sector. There are links to the White Paper and various associated documents on the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) web site, and the Trades Union Congress has published a balanced assessment of/briefing about the White Paper.
I had a look at the White Paper from the point of view of e-learning. The term "blended learning" is absent: hopefully it is drifting out of use. But "personalisation" is in with a vengeance, with almost all of the White Paper's references to e-learning made in the context of personalisation. This is not surprising given the way that the term permeates UK Government educational thinking at present, with one of the four strands of the DfES Technology Group now led by a "Programme Director for Personalised Content". Maybe as a result of having co-written a report on personalisation in presentation services for JISC a couple of years ago I am sceptical about the current policy emphasis.
Firstly, where is the evidence that (whatever the term means) personalisation will improve the efficacy of public education? Secondly, there is a lot of vagueness about the meaning of the term, with definitions varying from the (perfectly acceptable, general) "the antithesis of impersonal", to the more technically focused "automatically structured to meet the needs of the learner".
Although the White Paper uses the term overall mainly in the former sense, it also uses it in the second sense, making the assumption that e-learning has a major role to play in providing a personalised experience. Developing a clear framework which explains what is meant by "personalised" in the context of educational policy would help, and it would go some way to reduce the risk of absurd/naive "snake oil" claims being made for this or that online content's (or this or that technical system's) capacity to make learning personalised.
[I showed a draft of this post to David Jennings, whom I've worked with on various projects, including writing the Draft for Public Comment for British Standard BS8426 - A code of practice for e-support in e-learning systems (8-page handout - 150 kB PDF), and whose web log I sometimes link to. He made the following point about personalisation, which I agree with. "The idea that technology can second-guess the needs of learners is superficially attractive but riddled with problems; I've never seen evidence of it being done effectively and with consistent accuracy; if it's done inaccurately it just undermines the transparency of the system and the users' control, which makes things worse."]
I agree with you Seb that "personalisation" can mean all things to all people. Also that the idea of personalisation meaning computers automatically structuring people's learning pathways can be quite dangerous.
I think there are people who would like to narrow "personalisation" down to this - but there is a really strong momentum for a much broader (and I think very positive) interpretation of "personalisation", around empowering learners, giving them "ownership" of their learning, and meeting their particular needs and preferences.
Examples of this include (I think and hope!) most of Becta's thinking - e.g.
http://www.qca.org.uk/downloads/niel_mclean_ict_enabling_universal_access.pdf
- a futurelab report - http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/personalisation.htm and
- Tribal's white paper at
http://www.tribaltechnology.co.uk/pdfs/papers/Personalised_Learning_R1104.pdf
I personally (ever the optimist!) feel that the personalisation band-wagon is very much an opportunity to be seized.
Posted by: Bob Banks | 07/04/2006 at 14:04