of those same technologies to better customize mass learning. For example, if you’ve ever browsed or purchased something at Amazon (www.amazon.com), you notice the company’s website algorithms immediately begin to bring similar products to your attention (Amazon.com, n.d.). The more you use the site, the more information the site gathers about your preferences. Using that information, Amazon customizes your shopping experience to match your personal profile.
The way Amazon compiles and analyzes personal profiles to create a unique shopping experience for customers is part of something called big data. Big data refer to the use of advanced data analytics to extract value from the information it stores in a database (“Big data,” n.d.). Amazon uses big-data analytics to determine individual user preferences (among other things), and it’s not the only company using big data to create experiences customized to individuals. Facebook uses big-data profiles to determine how to organize each user’s news feeds to reflect his or her interests. YouTube uses big-data profiles to suggest videos that will be of interest to particular people. There are many more (DeZyre, 2015). Big data are already well-established, and the ways companies use them will continue to grow and improve in the future. But consider for a moment how we can productively apply these concepts to education.
Big-data analytics can also enhance learning experiences for individual students who attend their schools. By compiling personal learning profiles, preferences, and progress for individual students, we believe school districts will be able to finally break free of William Wirt’s 1908 lock-step approach to instruction. Big data will be a key to allowing students to progress at their own rate through school curriculum as well as the key to providing meaningful, automated, and personalized remedial instruction.
It is important to note that school systems will not be the only ones targeting young people with customized, personal educational programs. Already we see private companies offering instruction to students. The long-standing, entrenched approach to instruction that is prevalent in the school system doesn’t encumber these companies (Herold, 2016).
Consequently, they are able to incorporate strategies for customized, personal instruction much more quickly than traditional schools. We believe this necessitates a significant shift in the attitude schools have toward students. Instead of viewing students as those the law compels to attend school, we must begin to see our students as clients who have many instructional options and whom we must engage with interesting instruction that prepares them for the world they will face outside school.
Beyond just big-data collection, an important component of reorganizing schools around individual students will be ensuring that schools provide one-on-one time between a student and a teacher. Educational experts have known for some time that a meaningful relationship with a caring adult is an important factor in students’ success in school (Boynton & Boynton, 2005). The key is to create an organizational structure that facilitates this relationship and to allot sufficient time for the adult to get to know each student as a unique individual.
Build Flexibility Into Everything
In an environment of constant and accelerating change, how do you develop effective instructional methods? How do you design or modify school facilities so they will continue to be effective over their entire life span? The answer is flexibility. Educators at all levels must include flexibility as a planned component in everything they do. Since conventional school spaces are not built for flexibility, this means we must embrace a major shift in thinking about how we configure spaces for learning.
It’s critical for all educators and stakeholders to keep in mind that it is their job to prepare students to succeed in environments that don’t exist yet, in jobs no one has thought of yet, doing tasks no one has imagined yet, using technology no one has invented yet. How can you provide instruction that is flexible enough to equip students for the huge range of future possibilities that await them? We believe the key is to teach students processes, because a process-focused approach is the best way to future-proof our students.
The best way to understand a process-focused instructional approach is to compare it to the content-focused approach educators traditionally use. Content-focused approaches focus on memorization and information recall, which are concepts we discussed previously in this chapter (Technology Transforms Lives, page 18). Because it is simply not possible to memorize the enormous volume of new and changing informational content the modern world produces, what students need from educators is to learn an effective process for finding information and assessing the credibility and relevance of the information they find. From there, students can effectively use those resources to educate themselves with what they need to know in the moment. Process skills, many of which we discuss throughout chapter 3 (page 29), empower students to function in life because these skills remain the same even as the world changes.
Rethink How We Use Time
There is an old saying in education that if time is the constant, then learning is the variable. It means that if a course runs for a fixed length of time, not all students will have learned the same amount when the course is over. This has been an underlying foundation to the instructional approach in the school system for a very long time. It is an approach that virtually all of us experienced growing up, and most students still experience this approach in schools. Courses run for a fixed period—a year-long term or a four- or five-month semester. When students finish a course, teachers assess how well they learned the curriculum. Those who excel receive As, those who display genuine proficiency receive Bs, and so on down the line. Learning varies from student to student, and educators view failure as an accepted outcome for those who could not learn enough in the time allotted. Those who fail have to repeat the entire grade or course, often with the same teacher using the same instructional approach that contributed to the failure in the first place.
But what would happen if we inverted the old saying? What would schools look like if learning was the constant and time was the variable? How would we have to adjust our instruction if the focus shifted from teaching for a fixed period to continuous learning for students? It turns out that this one change to the way learning occurs changes for the better almost everything we do in schools.
Reconsider our elements of schooling diagram (figure page 3) and its six elements that support learning. When you start making changes to the use of time, you drastically change all the other elements as well. For example, if we allow teachers to make learning the constant and time the variable then we must allow for students to progress through course material at their own pace. Such a change has significant ramifications for the way teachers teach. It’s much harder for teachers to stand in front of a class and talk about some aspect of a curriculum because not all students will be ready for that instruction at the same time. This means shifting instruction away from talking to whole classes and focusing more on discussions with individual students or small student groups. The teacher’s role changes from being the sage on the stage, who talks to students to pass on his or her knowledge to them, to the guide on the side, who advises them on the best learning strategies and digital tools to assist students with mastering course material.
Since mastery of course material is necessary for students to progress in a school where learning is the constant, failure is no longer a part of student evaluation. Students either master part of their required learning or continue working toward mastery. Assessment of learning can shift from norm-referenced evaluation (grading A to F) to criterion-referenced assessment that uses rubrics to measure the degree to which students master course material. Using criterion-referenced assessment, the goal shifts from rating and ranking students according to their level of learning over a fixed period to all students mastering
