How personalised learning can help students succeed

By conventional measures, the Summit Public Schools, founded in 2003, were a rousing success, with a reputation for innovation and a near-perfect graduation rate. And yet the leaders of the Bay Area charter network were dismayed to discover in 2010 that only slightly more than half of its graduates were on track to graduate from college in six years.

“Research indicates that it’s cognitive skills, not memorized content, that determines if students will be successful in college,” says Brian Johnson, a middle school teacher with a science focus at the Summit 6-12 Denali School in Sunnyvale, California. “And not all of our students were getting those skills.”

And so the Denali campus, the seventh school in the network, turned to a personalized learning model when it opened its doors in 2013. The basic premise behind the model is that students can learn content best when they approach it at the pace and ability level that’s right for them. At Denali they do this with online playlists consisting of videos, reading materials, exercises, and formative and final assessments that they take when they feel ready.

Because research shows that math struggles are a major factor in failing to complete college, Summit students also get 35 minutes of math practice each day, mostly through Khan Academy. “Khan is great because students can work on the math they need when they feel ready for it,” Johnson says.

When students learn content through technology, teachers are freed to focus on what’s most important for college success: the development of students’ skills. At Denali much of this happens during a daily 90-minute project time, when students in small teams draw from the material they’ve studied to tackle such projects as weighing the merits of nuclear technology, studying the effects of global warming, and creating mathematical models that set out the costs and benefits of college.

During this time teachers, working in pairs, do the cognitive equivalent of a full-court press. Because each project, lasting weeks or even months, ends with a demonstration of what students have learned, teachers continually coach students on critical skills involving writing, speaking, problem-solving, synthesizing, and more.

“It’s important to understand that personalization happens not just with the technology but with the project time, too,” Johnson says. “We’re constantly giving them feedback not just on academic skills, but on how they’re working together, staying focused, working toward deadlines.”

It’s too early to know if the Summit approach will result in more of its graduates graduating from college in a timely fashion. But Summit teachers like Johnson are confident that by using personalized learning for content and concentrating their efforts on skill-building, they—and their students––are on the right track.

Published in collaboration with Impatient Optimists

Author: David Ruenzel is a writer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Image: Palestinian first-graders sit with their schoolbooks during class in the West Bank city of Ramallah February 4, 2013. REUTERS.