Customized Curriculum
One increasingly recognized factor is that every student needs a different curriculum. The range of needs is very broad, from simple arithmetic to intermediate algebra. Because of this, the process of remediating these needs in a standard course structure is very time consuming. Students must move slowly through the course sequence even if they only need to fill a few gaps. The result is that on the average, a developmental math student takes 1.5 years just to complete the developmental requirement – and that’s only for the ones who make it through the gauntlet. It’s not surprising that many don’t make it.
The time required to complete the developmental sequence is widely regarded as a major contributor to the low completion and graduation rates for developmental students. Many simply run out of money, motivation, or both, before they complete the developmental requirements.
One of the important features of Class of 1 is that it allows you to provide a truly customized curriculum for every student – one that is precisely matched to the specific needs of each student. How this is done is covered below.
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Customized Learning Support
While customizing curriculum is important, it’s not the only innovation that’s needed. There’s an even bigger problem – ineffective or insufficient study habits on the part of the student. Everyone has heard the familiar lament - we can’t get students to do the math. Students often are passive or withdrawn in class. They’re content to watch you do math but don’t do much math themselves.
A closely related problem is that a large percentage of developmental students don’t know how or are not capable of studying effectively on their own. That is they simply have poor study habits. They study the wrong things, they’re focused on the wrong objectives, or their activity is inefficient. To make matters worse, many just don’t study enough. Because instructors can’t monitor what students do out of class, it’s virtually impossible to have an impact with these students.
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The Traditional Approach - The Group Instruction Model
In response to this situation, several programs have been developed using technology designed to support the traditional group instruction model in the classroom. They are based on providing “more flexible” access to resources in electronic format. However, the only real value added in this model is that the same elements of the instructional process are delivered in electronic format. Content is delivered by giving students access to text on screen instead of in a book, or by giving students videos of lectures instead of attending live lectures. Neither of these changes anything about the learning process except a different way of accessing the same resources.
Granted, these programs also give students practice problems to work on the computer instead of assigning them to the student in a book with answers in the back. While this process does provide students immediate feedback on their answers, that’s all it adds to the learning process. This feature has been promoted as the primary “benefit” of technology products for many years but it hasn’t produced the dramatic gains in achievement needed to give all students a chance to succeed.
In general, this approach gives students content materials in new formats but it adds little if anything to the quality of the learning experience. In short, this approach just “automates the past,” which is the group instruction process controlled entirely by the instructor.
The major drawback of this approach to supporting instruction with technology is that giving the student complete flexibility in accessing resources does not provide the learning support they need. It does nothing to solve the underlying problem – they don’t know how to take advantage of the resources provided. History has shown that most of them would not be successful when provided live lectures and textbooks. Simply providing them the same resources in electronic format doesn’t change their likelihood of using them effectively.
By and large, these students don’t like learning on their own, and they’re not very successful at it. They want and need additional help. The reality is that what they need is less flexibility in how to learn, not more flexibility. They need a more structured guidance and support system that enables them to become successful, while retaining all the flexibility associated with online access to all resources. But what should this guidance and support system look like?
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Improved Guidance and Support
The most important requirement is that it must ensure success for everyone. The guidance and support process must make it easier for every student to learn and must result in consistent success for every student, every day. Otherwise the student will not be motivated to participate.
How do we accomplish this?
Class of 1 uses technology to bring unprecedented levels of automation to the learning process. It does far more than simply deliver text, video and practice. It controls every aspect of the learning experience – from detailed, front-end needs assessment, through automated scheduling and delivery of instruction in a multimedia format, through formative assessment to modify delivery based on student performance, and finally, summative testing to ensure that students have mastered every topic they need to learn.
A critical component of the Class of 1 learning system is that it is adaptive. That is, the sequence of learning events is controlled on a dynamic basis in response to how each student performs at every step of the process. Because of this, we refer to the guidance and support provided as “adaptive learning support.” This adaptive capability is used to optimize the learning process for each student by matching the instruction provided to the demonstrated needs of each student and by ensuring that students engage in the most productive activity at all points in the process. It does this on a real-time basis, every minute of every day it’s used.
While adaptive control of the learning process is critical, just controlling what the student does is not enough. The adaptive control mechanisms must reflect the best of current knowledge about how to produce effective learning and it must be satisfying to the student. Consequently, the design of the control process is based on an extensive, solid research foundation and incorporates many elements that have been documented to produce more effective and efficient learning. Every element of this research-based design contributes to greater student success. The expertise behind this design is the core expertise of iLearn. In addition, student satisfaction has been found to be exceptionally high when using this system over a ten-year period.
In short, Class of 1 determines what each student needs to learn, presents the appropriate content, and requires every student to learn everything presented - and it makes it easy for them to do so. As a result, the Class of 1 system is able to deliver a truly customized course of instruction to each student. It delivers just what each student needs to learn and makes it virtually impossible to fail.
This approach reflects that fact that students don’t like being left on their own to learn. It’s not control that students object to – It’s uncertainty, frustration and failure. When students are responsible for knowing how to learn on their own, these are the outcomes many of them experience. On the other hand, when a structured learning process is optimized so that it makes learning easier and leads to consistent success, students exhibit new levels of satisfaction and motivation. The outcome is much higher levels of achievement.
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The New Model – Individual Tutoring
In summary, this approach to using technology represents a significant departure from other uses. Instead of supporting the traditional group instruction model, it is designed as an innovative alternative to that model – one based on individual tutoring instead of a group process.
Virtually everyone would agree that if math instructors had the luxury of working one-on-one with each student individually, the difficulties cited above would go away. Every student would receive just the content they need to learn, with the instructional support needed to learn it. Obviously, this is simply not practical. The Class of 1 approach allows you to come as close as possible to this individual tutoring model for instructional delivery in a practical and cost effective manner.
The Class of 1 model allows the instructor to become a full-time tutor rather than the controller and administrator of a group process. At the same time it retains certain critical features of the group instruction model. The recommended usage is to have students attend class on a standard schedule, working within the system for the entire class period. All homework is completed outside the classroom but using the system also. This means that the instructor has control over the activities of every student both in class and out of class.
With group instruction, it’s up to the instructor to manage the instructional process for every student. This is a very burdensome task that can only be accomplished to a limited extent. By having the computer control the process, the instructor is freed up to do what they are uniquely qualified to do. They work with students individually to ensure that each one is successful. One of the advantages of the Class of 1 system is that when students are in class, they are highly engaged in doing math for the entire period. The instructor is free to roam the room and interact with students as needed to help them over rough spots. Of course, the instructor is also supported by access to both summary and detailed performance data for all students on a real-time basis via the web. The bottom line for the instruction is that he/she is able to be more effective with more students, while enjoying a reduced workload, since virtually every administrative function is handled by the system.
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You can find more details about many of the features and benefits of Class of 1 via the links on this page.
