Self-regulated (Personalised) Learning During COVID-19

Overview

According to a recent report from UNESCO (2020), more than 1.9 billion students -children and youth- from 190 countries are forced to transfer their education from face-to-face to online form to fight the outbreak of COVID-19. This sudden shift created 

1. crisis in terms of course design, evaluation tools and teaching strategies (Affouneh et al., 2020)
2. a high level of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty among educators

However, several emerging technologies came to the rescue in higher education settings whether using these tools on campus, blended, or fully in online environments (Czerkawski & Lyman, 2016). These technologies reshaped student engagement for learning through new features that enable learners and instructors to communicate synchronously and asynchronously (Bergdahl et al., 2020; Khlaif & Farid, 2018).

There has been an abundance of research on online learning before the COVID-19 crisis to understand the factors influencing student’s engagement in online learning which could differ from the factors  influencing student’s engagement in online learning during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. What are the factors that influence student personalised learning during an environment such as COVID-19 in developed countries?
2. How do these factors influence the implementation and continuity of online classes in an emergency remote environment in developed countries? 

Teachers’ presence and quality of content were the major factors that influence student engagement and their learning normally. In online leaning, on the other hand, several factors such as infrastructure factors, cultural factors, digital inequality, and digital privacy influence student engagement in online leaning. 

Definition of Personalised Learning

Different definitions of student engagement have been proposed by many researchers.

Personalised learning has been variously defined and interpreted in practice. Larry Cuban provides a useful discussion of the range of personalised learning offerings, including examples from practice.

Personalised learning refers to the various educational programsmes, instructional methods, and academic support strategies to address the distinct learning needs of each individual student. The goal of personalised learning is to help each student achieve academic success by first understanding the learning needs, interests, and aspirations of individual students, and then providing customised learning. The foundation of personalised learning is for each and every student to become involved in making decisions about their education: what they would like to learn and how.

Personalisation of learning is conceptualised in a range of ways:

1. Personalisation of content; students engaging with content, topics and areas that are of particular interest to them.
2. Personalisation of pace and progress; students progressing through the content and curriculum levels at their own pace.
3. Personalisation of process; instructional approaches and learning environments vary based on the students’ needs and interests.

Personalisation often includes the following tenets:

• Learning is competency based, with students moving on once they have demonstrated mastery of a concept.
• Learning is flexible, and is not restricted to traditional schooling structures or timetables
• Students are encouraged to demonstrate agency and to take a level of ownership over their learning journey
• Students’ interests, strengths and passions are incorporated into their learning

To summarise, Bond (2020) defines PL as "the energy and effort that students employ within their learning community, observable via any number of behavioural, cognitive or affective indicators across a continuum" . In addition, Dixson (2015) defines it as the effort that the learner makes to acquire knowledge and build his/her critical thinking skills through staying involved in the learning process. Moreover, Wong and Chong (2018) defined PL as a unique collection of comprised active and collaborative learning, participation in enriching learning activities, communication with teachers and among learners, involvement in educational experiences, and feeling supported.

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Affouneh, S., Salha, S., & Khlaif, Z. N. (2020). Designing quality e-learning environments for emergency remote teaching in coronavirus crisis. Interdisciplinary Journal of Virtual Learning in Medical Sciences, 11(2), 135–137.

Czerkawski, B. & Lyman, B. (2016). An Instructional Design Framework for Fostering Student Engagement in Online Learning Environments. Tech Trends 60, 532–539 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-016-0110-z