Dive Brief:
- California-based Summit Public Schools is offering a free and open curriculum, which emphasizes projects, self-paced learning goals, and cognitive skill development. Developed in 2015, 130 schools around the nation in 27 different states have already piloted the program, reports Education Next.
- Summit created an online platform with teacher-created courses and assessments for grades 5 through 12 with development help from Facebook; it allows students to personalize their learning plans by offering them videos and practice work to choose from.
- In exchange for free services, participating schools test the platform in different environments and share their results with other schools so that they may adapt better, and teachers nationwide can even collaborate further through Facebook, sharing tips and advice on best practices.
Dive Insight:
Over the last decade, the idea of "personalized learning" has become extremely popular in the K-12 sector; it's one of the factors that is meant to move educators away from old, industrial styles of teaching towards the more engaging, creative, and flexible models of instruction known as School 2.0. Already, classrooms across the nation are seeing the benefits, as studies show that personalized learning strategies enhance student engagement. For example, a 2016 New Classrooms survey of 4,000 middle school students showed that 70% of those questioned thought they improved as independent learners, while another 75% felt they worked well independently on a computer with guided support.