Shedding Light on the Adaptive Black Box: Adaptive Learning Close Up

Over the last few years, the world has fawned over the possibilities of adaptive learning technology, hoping that it would finally be “the thing” that would transform the classroom. Adaptive technology has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. At the same time, educators often struggle to understand which adaptive learning technologies would be best for their students, and companies don’t always communicate what practical value their technologies will add.

There is very little consensus about what digital adaptive learning technologies are, what they can and cannot do, and how they work. This project aims to demystify adaptive technology so that both educators and product developers can make good on the promise behind this technology to improve teaching and learning. To that end, we investigated three research questions:

• What is adaptive learning?
• What’s inside the adaptive learning black box?
• How do the tools on the market differ?

With this report we hope to provide educators with categories that map onto their instructional needs, so that they can better understand how a given tool will or won’t help fulfill those needs. We also hope that edtech companies will be able to communicate their value more clearly, so that educators understand the impact each tool can have.

We hope this research will move the field toward better decisions, better product design, better professional development for teachers, better implementations, and better outcomes for learners. The report includes the following elements:

• a definition of adaptive learning technology
• a framework for understanding the different ways a tool might be adaptive
• the application of the framework and definitions to 24 adaptive tools

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Disclosure

This report was made possible through support from Pearson. The opinions, beliefs, and findings published in the report, were generated independently by EdSurge. EdSurge retains sole editorial control and responsibility for the content in this project.

About Pearson

This report is part of Pearson’s Open Ideas series.

Pearson is the world’s learning company, with expertise in educational courseware and assessment, and a range of teaching and learning services powered by technology. Pearson’s mission is to help people make progress through access to better learning. Pearson is built on the idea that learning opens up opportunities, creating fulfilling careers and better lives

Methodology

The methodology for this project is described on page 17 of the downloadable report.

This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.