"Instructional content, like tofu, has no flavor of its own. It's up to educators to season it."
The hardest part of scaling personalized learning education is the concept of personalized learning. As an instructor, coach, mentor or teacher, you need to understand the social and emotional learning of students. This leads to successful outreach and better support. It can be difficult because the student is the expert in what will lead to their learning success. As an educator, your role is to identify the success characteristics and attributes of each student.
Identify Characteristics
The structure created to identify these characteristics should consider the student’s past and current learning experiences. This differs from learning outcome rubrics criteria where educators spend more time on what leads to good learning outcomes than what influences positive learning experiences. Once characteristics and attributes are identified, you will measure the impact they have on learning. Characteristic behaviors might have an impact only on certain subjects or during certain time frames. It is not definite and it changes over time.
The process takes a while to understand and will never be mastered. Leave room to improve the process of identifying the learning characteristics and attributes. Once you begin to see correlations between characteristics, behaviors, learning processes and outcomes then you can start to customize personalized learning support for each student.
Tofu Effect
It is hard to scale this model because students’ social and emotional states constantly change. The model has to be neutral but consistent to stay on top of the social and emotional learning rollercoaster. The learning outreach and support can only be effective if it is relevant to the student’s current emotional state.
I refer to the structure of this model as the Tofu Effect. Tofu is made by coagulating soy milk and it adopts and replicates the taste of different foods. Dig deeper and you find the chemical ingredients of tofu that cause the flavor adaptability. A successful personalized learning support model includes tofu mechanical ingredients.
To scale personalized learning, institutions will need to consider the Tofu Effect of learning at every level; curriculum development, technology features such as LMS triggers and flags, assessment, evaluation and learning support through teachers, coaches, mentors and other peers. Give students time to learn first and then integrate the Tofu Effect principles in every touch point of the learning experience. To do this right takes time, money, resources and commitment to embrace the failures.
When implemented properly, it becomes easier for the student and learning support staff to focus on the key criteria that impacts positive learning. Students that are aware of their own successful skills and habits are more likely to utilize their strengths to achieve an end goal. This helps students understand their unique learning strengths and weaknesses. They become more resourceful in asking for help and the interaction between the student and educators becomes transparent. Students display humility to seek proper support in order to progress forward in the learning challenges.
The emotional part of learning is being able to identify internal components that affect student perception of learning. Learning success occurs when the student takes ownership and will vary from one student to another.
Outcome
The Tofu Effect approach creates a significant outcome for your students. They become aware of personal learning strengths and weaknesses, they develop humility in their learning and resourcefulness in seeking help. Involvement and participation in learning leads them to take ownership in the process and they put their best effort into learning deliverables