Personalizing education is both necessary and virtually impossible to implement in the current educational system. However, this impossibility of implementation is just due to a lack of tools? If so, this is a problem that can be solved.
What are learning styles?
We all have our preferred learning styles. According to one of the typologies (Schmeck, 1983), we learn in the following styles:
- The deep processing style – based on the fact that we organize information and want to understand its meanings, use comparisons, look for similarities and contrasts, categorize and apply a critical assessment to the acquired content.
- The processing style – dominated by a tendency to encode information by personalizing it, referring to oneself, expressing it in one’s own words and then paraphrasing.
- The memorizing style – collecting facts and details; storing all categorizable information, facts, names, dates etc.
- The methodical learning style – using established learning habits, learning at a specific predetermined frequency and using techniques contained in “How to study?” guides.
The fact is that a specific person’s optimal learning style is encoded at the neurological level. Nevertheless, the typology of styles is not a closed topic and requires further research.
Why does personalizing learning make sense?
When information is incorrectly provided (non-personalized), a student must process it a second time. It costs them a lot of energy and the efficiency of the whole learning process decreases. A solution for this could be personalized learning.
In most of today’s educational system, however, there are no processes that could support such learning. The decision to personalize teaching is left up to teachers. Some want it, some don’t. Those who want to are left to their own devices. How could they possibly efficiently diagnose the learning styles of all of their students in all of their classes? No one can demand such effort or competence from one teacher.
Undoubtedly though, the personalization of teaching has great advantages. Thanks to it, students:
- Acquire knowledge faster and with less energy
- Better understand the content they are learning
- Develop their personal talents
Personalizing learning is also an honest approach to children’s diversity.
Ignoring the diversity of learning styles can have long-term consequences
The result of the lack of individualization in teaching is a decrease in the effectiveness of the entire process. Moreover, the responsibility for the fact that incorrectly provided knowledge is not assimilated falls on the shoulders of the student and their parents. The final effect is discouraging young people from school and learning in general.
The latter can especially have serious long-term consequences. It is well known that in order to fulfill oneself in modern society you have to continue learning throughout your whole life. The willingness to make this effort and the ability to actually learn new things in a given time period is verified primarily by the labor market. Someone who left school with the conviction that they cannot and do not like to learn, will lose out on many opportunities is life.
How does Empathyzer help personalize learning?
Empatyzer can make it much easier for teachers to discover a student’s learning style. It diagnoses their personality and uses the results of scientific research that confirms the correlation between personality and information processing styles. As a result, Em can suggest what teaching method will be best for a particular student.
Implementing Empatyzer is not a fundamental or systemic change. It’s an easy, practical step towards personalized learning. This ease of use is crucial today as it lowers the entry barrier for teachers who want to teach children more effectively.
