Talented instructors know their material so well that they also know all the different ways the material can be misunderstood. To them, every possible question, every exercise in a course has wrong answers that help diagnose the nature of the misunderstanding. These are the matters that are hopefully discussed in one-on-one sessions between a struggling student and an instructor. The discussions apply remedial instruction about the concepts or techniques the student doesn’t grasp, to achieve a complete understanding.
For some years, such deep subject knowledge has guided the development of “adaptive testing,” used in the Graduate Record Examination and other computer-assisted tests. In these tests, students answer different questions depending on their performance. If the student answers the first question in a knowledge domain incorrectly, an easier question is administered next. This continues until a correct answer is given. If the student answers the first question correctly, a more difficult question is presented. This variability, tailored to the individual student, permits much shorter tests for some students, as their answers quickly identify their level of comprehension of the material.
As courses go online, the same computer-assisted structure can be helpful. Each module of course material is initially presented in that manner proven to be useful for the majority of students, and then short exercises/questions about the material are presented. If a student answers the questions correctly, he/she proceeds to the next phase of the presentation. In contrast, every type of wrong answer can generate a different remedial experience, customized to the type of misunderstanding the error usually implies. (This is like the help session in the instructor’s office after class.) Following that, a similar exercise is presented to allow the student to demonstrate their newfound knowledge. Then the student moves to the next module.
What’s exciting about this opportunity is that it can offer much more personalized learning experiences, when the adaptive learning application is designed by a master in the field. One can see how this would be especially useful for struggling students who, for whatever reason, don’t take advantage of office hours in traditional courses. Even more attractive is the fact that the repair of misunderstandings is accomplished quite quickly, before bad logic is applied repeatedly. Quick repairs of knowledge are easier to make; cognitive errors made repeatedly are harder to “unlearn.”
Finally, another attraction of adaptive learning applications is that they allow some self-pacing. Indeed, it resembles common pedagogical techniques of tutors of individual students, letting the student set the pace of the course. Every instructor knows students in his/her class who master the material faster than the course design can present it. Adaptive learning applications allow the talented student to move through the course much more quickly, at a pace that suits them. Such self-paced learning, however, will cause some complications for current 15 week structure of many universities.
Another aspect of designing adaptive learning courses is that much work is required at the front end of the process. A detailed cognitive map of the material is useful. For each node in the map, all the possible misunderstandings should be identified. For each misunderstanding, a repair strategy must be proposed and developed. For each repair, an exercise should be designed to verify that the repair was successful. For errors made late in the course, the repair may involve returning to much earlier material, but the designer must decide whether that material should be presented in some new way, given the error made by the student.
Talented instructors in face to face settings invent the diagnostic questions and remediation “on the fly” when a student presents with a given confusion. With adaptive learning applications they design from the beginning such repairs. Once designed, however, both the students and the instructors enjoy its benefits. With good adaptive design, all students learn faster. With good adaptive design, the student-instructor interaction can focus on more higher level discussions of the material. This can enrich the on-campus experience for Georgetown students.