Personalized Learning: the Best Education Or the Worst?

theodp writes: In an exclusive interview with Education Week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about why he is shifting his K-12 giving priorities to personalized learning. While acknowledging that there's not yet any independent, large-scale research to show personalized learning's effectiveness, Zuck argues that "the model just intuitively makes sense." But just days later, Fordham University professor Mark Naison wrote in the Washington Post about why the personalized learning efforts of 'a growing number of those with investment capital seeking profitable outlets,' which presumably includes Zuck, make him 'incredibly pessimistic' about the future of public education. That Zuck — like fellow personalized learning cheerleaders/funders Bill Gates and former U.S. Education Chief Arne Duncan — seemed to be unaware of studies on personalized learning studies that date back to the '70s is troubling. But people don't "Like" 40+ year-old Ed.gov papers, so Zuck could be forgiven for not seeing them and, as a result, believing that the personalized learning plan dashboard his Facebook engineers knocked out truly is the ground-breaking solution to 'one of education's biggest problems' that Melinda Gates cracks it up to be.

Comments

You know...

[rmdingler]

It is human nature to imagine fame and success make you ideally suited to solve all the world's problems.

I don't know who said, "the more you know, the more you realize you don't know," but this is not the conclusion a great number of intelligent people automatically arrive at.

Re:You know...

[ceoyoyo]

Last week I told a grad student "grad school is where you learn that you don't know nearly as much as you think you do. A postdoc is where you learn that nobody else does either."

Please just be a bank account

[sjbe]

While acknowledging that there's not yet any independent, large-scale research to show personalized learning's effectiveness, Zuck argues that "the model just intuitively makes sense."

All sorts of things "just make sense" that are actually completely wrong when objectively examined. That's why we do experiments to see if they actually work before rolling them out in a big way. Basing policy on a hunch is REALLY stupid unless you have no other choice and this is not one of those times where we have no other choice. Maybe he's in the test phase but it sure doesn't sound like an experiment. It's annoying how Zuckerberg (and Gates) thinks that because he was successful in software that it somehow qualifies him to be something more than a bank account for areas of endeavor where he demonstrably has no special expertise or insight. At least Gates no longer has a day job so conceivably he has the time to actually devote to the details of these issues. There is no way Zuckerberg actually has enough time to really do much more than parrot what the people he hired are telling him.

Re:40+ years old studies

[Sique]

And if you read the WP article, you know why: To save on teaching staff. The head count of the teachers at universities and other educational institutions has stagnated since decades, but enrollment has exploded, and so has administrative staffing (and the wages for the administrational staff).

It's not because online education is inherently better, it's because you can offer the same course material to more people without investing into more buildings, additional positions for teachers and mentors or any other infrastructure that actuallyhelps the students. No one cares if it profits the single student, as long as you can profit from more students.