NextGen Schools: Measuring Success of Blended and Personalized, Innovative Practices

People often misunderstand the next-generation teaching practices as technology-rich instructions. Blended learning, as well as personalized and innovative teaching methods, goes far beyond online lectures and high-tech devices. The point of this approach is to provide an individualized experience for each learner, based on their base of knowledge, skills, strengths, weaknesses, and interests.

Due to the high level of personalization required for these teaching practices, there’s a common underlying question that makes us scratch our heads: how effective are they? How do you measure the success of a teaching method for each student it’s personalized for? The point of this article is to give the answers.

Step 1: Determine What Kind of Success You Want to Achieve

The first and most important step towards measuring success is determining what you mean when you say “successful personalized learning.” What do you want your students to achieve? It’s important to set a precise frame of expectations, which will allow your learners to respond to take standardized tests. Your vision of personalized learning will define the pace of the process.

Step 2: Choose a Measurement Approach

The next important step is choosing measurement techniques that allow you to define the success both you and the students are achieving. It’s also important to think how you are going to share the results, so the learners will get motivated through the evaluation.

According to a report by The Learning Accelerator, these are the recommended aspects of a measurement framework:

• Inputs – the setting in which blended or personalized teaching practices take place. The input includes student and educator demographics, resources, state-determined policies, support system, and other contextual elements. You need to understand how they align with your goals and activities.
• Activities – the process you and your students commit to for the sake of meeting the goals.  
• Outputs – the results of the activities, provided in numbers. This factor includes measurements of the number of educators and students that take part in the program, the number of hours spent in activities, the number of devices, and the number of specific activities.
• Outcomes – the changes and growth you expect to see as a result of all above-listed factors.
• Impacts – the growth and changes you expect to see on the long term. Ideally, the impact should match or exceed the goals you set. You can check out the Education Elements report to see an example of impact measuring.           

With a structured approach to measurement, you’ll make the process easier not only for your students, but for yourself as well.

Step 3: Use the Right Tools

You’re not left on your own. There is an entire community of educators who work together to advanced processes of blended, personalized, and innovative learning. You can become part of that community and use different tools that make your job much easier.

• LEAP Learning Framework provides different resources and surveys that allow you to define your goals and measure your students’ achievements through personalized learning.
• Choice boards are graphic organizers that can support multiple learning styles within the class. You take an assignment and create four choices for completion. The students choose their own way to complete the task or learn the concept, and then you’ll measure the results they achieved.
• AussieWriter is a writing service that can support the process of completing different assignments. Each learner has an individual approach towards academic writing, as well as strengths and weaknesses that are difficult to measure. When they work with professional writers, they can understand how academic content should look like, since they will get personalized advice.
• Edublogs is another instrument that supports innovative learning practices. You can also use them as a tool for measuring results, since you’ll get direct insights into a student’s understanding and interest to research a particular topic. In addition, you see how the learners improve their writing skills by maintaining a blog.

Innovative teaching practices are effective. You can inspire your students to study more and learn more efficiently when you understand their individual needs. The important thing to keep in mind is that you can’t go with the flow. You can experiment with different techniques, but you have to find a way to measure their effectiveness if you want to discover the method that works. Hopefully, the tips above will help you do that.

Amy Cowen writes about all things related to education and students' life, but her main passion  is technology and different tools. You can find her providing assignment help or career advice to students.