How can you personalize and guide online learners?

I think in the learner analysis we can also include the level of support they receive. If they have a conducive learning environment at home, if they have opportunities to put what they have learnt into practice.

My only comment on this is that this is absolutely the way to go but it requires a lot of advance planning. I learned this during an e-learning course design project, which already had the material written. Adding these choices as an afterthought was almost impossible at that point.

A strategy I have found to be helpful (in the context of e-learning) involves introducing learners to a series of questions at the beginning of a course. The questions are aimed at assessing their existing knowledge/level. Based on the responses provided by each learner, the course can then diverge into various scenarios or pathways. This approach personalizes the learning experience for every individual, customizing the desired learning outcomes.

I find synchronous and asynchronous communication helpful when it comes to E learning. It gives me room to fully engage with learners and ensures that I give maximum support. I usually ask open ended questions to gather more from the learner. Open ended questions often help me to get the perspective of the learner and help me to assess which style of delivery I use for each learner. E learning is more effective when customized for each learner.

The strategy of introducing questions at the beginning goes back to very basic teaching theory by connecting your delivery to the existing knowledge and skill level of the learner.

Using a classical research set up, using two groups who followed either a linear or an adaptive journey, we found that using adaptive learning you can save 33% study time for your learners. We analysed the data of over 600 participants in a medical mathematics course. The learning results stayed the same (going from about 70% to 90%), but the time spent in the linear path was 2h9m, compared to 1h25m in the adaptive path. A great result, which really makes the business case for applying adaptive learning techniques more often.

I've found that case studies, which many of us bring in a lot in our teaching, need to operate very differently online. They need to be 'flattened', with much more guidance around how to interact with the material, which usually happens organically in classrooms. I would love to hear more experiences with online case study teaching design, because I feel there's a loss of diverse perspectives that takes place when people don't interact as easily with both the material and each other simultaneously.

I came unstuck with collaboration while running an on line business unit. The problem was that all the participants were from a small community and would all be competing in the same business environment. Who wants to share their good ideas with a competitor?

Having prepared case studies available is really helpful but allow (encourage even) learners to bring in their own scenarios to group discussions as often they can benefit in a group activity from getting feedback on/exploring specific real life situations. Having examples to hand is great for those who don’t have/feel comfortable with bringing their own experiences or who need a little more guidance but make it an option for them to deviate from the resource provided to explore their own if relevant to the learning.

The most important thing here, I think, is that you ask meaningful questions. While coming up with various discussion forum questions and collaborative tasks for a course, I was always trying to put myself in the participants' shoes and imagine whether they'd find these questions relevant, authentic and meaningful. If the sole purpose of a collaborative task is to just be there, it's better to leave it out.

A lot of different learning platforms allow you to view the progress of your learners. In the end, it's about what you do with this data whether it impacts your learners. A very strong use case is analysing data from your online course before the live (online) class, for example the results on the quizzes or input from discussions. This information can be used to optimise the learning process and address the challenges your learners are facing more in depth.