Week 3 (2/18/21–2/24/21) — Pre-Thesis

Previous post: Week 2 (2/10/21–2/17/21) — Pre-Thesis

For this week, I was able to do a bit more research into some scholars that have been studying the concept of personalized learning and what it has been and what it could be with the integration of technology. However, most of the week was spent sort of reframing my research question into the problem. I was finally able to combine my research question into the following:

How can technology be used to implement personalized (adaptive & experimental principles) learning in an accessible way?

With this research question, the goal is to look at how to use the concept of personalized learning while using tools like adaptive and experimental learning approaches to help improve student’s mastery within the classroom.

I was able to settle on two prototyping approaches (this may change based on future research and after talking to stakeholders that would be involved with the adoption)

Personalized Learning Platform that uses gamification, adaptive and experimental principles

• There are many platforms that are adaptive and provides typically retention-based education. But they lack large-scale adoption, particularly, due to costs, maintenance, and lack of research.
• I’m not a developer, but I’d imagine it be some sort of software that helps provide resources (probably HW help) with a mastery-based approach.

Frameworks for Integrating Personalized Ed Tech within K-12 Classrooms

• To hit the accessibility point, from my current research, it seems teachers are familiar with the idea of personalized learning and certain tech that exists, but lack the time and resources to do so.
• I’d imagine the prototype could be some sort of guide that provides a framework for adapting curriculum specifically with the goal of reinforcement within the classroom to improve mastery of concepts.

Both I think as of right now are some good tools to addressing the problem, of course, I do want to do a deeper dive and tease out some root causes to the issue at hand. I hope to do so by following the schedule below:

• Feb 24: reach out to interview some Learning Designers that I’ve worked with
• Mar 1: start initial build of prototype options, conduct research on any new EdTech platforms doing similar work
• Mar 6: gather feedback from Learning Designers
• Mar 10: Refine the problem definition based on feedback
• Mar 17: Revise prototype, find more learning designers maybe test out initial prototype sketch with my students
• Mar 31: find relevant stakeholders, conduct personas, narrow scope
• April 7: continue to conduct research on learning design, refine problem and prototype based on findings
• April 28: prepare presentation for final report