When we discuss personalised education, the topic is often geared towards children. But actually where I think personalised education could be the most impactful is in adult learning - particularly in self-directed lifelong learning for work. Adults, unlike children, are not focusing on a fixed curriculum for what they need to learn. They all come to learning with different experience, knowledge, needs, goals and time constraints.
ChatGPT's interpretation of Personalised Adult Learning
Am I a Beginner? I Don't Think I'm Advanced...
When we put on a beginner or advanced class, it's quite difficult to find a level which works for everyone. This means some members of the class are lost at certain parts, and others are bored of learning something for the third time. Unless you started learning with a specific course as a beginner, it is unlikely you have covered everything needed for their more advanced courses. But also, beginners don't all come from the same place - take for example, four people wanting to learn Google Sheets. One has just started a new job - in their previous job they used Microsoft Excel but have never opened Google Sheets. Another is a recent graduate who has never used a spreadsheet. The next can use Google Sheets comfortably - typing in data, copying and pasting, some formatting - but has never written a formula. The final hasn't used Google Sheets or other spreadsheets very much, but has used SQL and Python often in previous roles as a Data Scientist. Technically all beginners, but they all need very different learning journeys.
Too Much Choice
The internet is amazing. The amount of courses and learning available online is amazing. However, the sheer amount has led to information overload. As part of my PhD, I researched how people learn data and AI skills, and many people explained to me how overwhelmed they felt when trying to learn something new. People were often so bombarded with choice they decided against learning, or tried a few unsuitable options and felt disheartened and gave up.
Video. Blog. Longer course. Virtual reality?
We've spoken to a lot of people about learning, and what we keep discovering is the many, many ways people learn. Some people love to learn through official courses, some through trying and breaking things, others prefer short videos. Also, everyone doesn't want the same format of learning all the time. Personally, I like a mix of blogs and hands-on experimenting when learning something technical, but prefer podcasts for more theoretical topics (or when I'm on the move).
Why do you want to learn that?
Throughout our school and university education, unfortunately we are very much learning to pass exams and get good grades. As adults, there are many reasons why we are learning something. We could be learning at the point of pain - meaning we need to do the thing now (often people give the example of VLOOKUPs in spreadsheets when we chat about this). In this situation, we don't want to watch a 30 minute video, we need the knowledge right now. Other times we are learning to become an expert in a topic, and a longer course with some applications might be better suited. Or we could be learning to be recognised or get a promotion, in this case a certification or something we can use to prove our skills is needed.
As well as these goals impacting how we learn something, they also have an impact on the content we want to learn. Our advisor JJ has been learning Spanish on Duolingo. He wants to be able to speak Spanish when he is in Spain or another Spanish speaking country. He loves Duolingo, the gamification element especially the leaderboard keeps him engaged in learning. But he spent over a week learning words to do with school (palabras sobre la escuela), which frustrated him as he will not be speaking to a waiter about his pencilcase (su estuche de lápices). If he could have told Duolingo his goals, perhaps the content could have been better tailored to JJ's learning needs.
Time to Take a Tailored Approach
With all of this in mind, it seems a bit old-fashioned that we are still approaching workplace education without a tailored approach. Yes, some companies give employees discretion of how they spend their learning budget (but this often ends up on one-size-fits-all online courses).
In technical industries, certifications (with prescribed content and proper exams) are still seen as a necessity. These are really expensive, and only work for certain types of learners (and typically the goal of learning is more similar to school, learn these topics to pass the exam to have it on your CV).
We’re seeing some progress with portfolio based apprenticeships in the UK. But often people want to learn more informally or without a long term commitment. This is when personalisation can be most impactful - saving time and frustration for employees, and avoiding wasted money on training sessions for employers.
At Taught by Humans, we're passionate about ensuring everyone can learn the skills they need for the future of work, with a focus on confidently applying these skills, not just learning for the sake of it. We've created DOT-ed, a personalised learning platform that tailors education to company requirements and individual employee needs. Try it for free, or let's chat about a trial for your team.