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Authors

Hannah Green, Researcher, DEMOS
Keri Facer, Research Director, Futurelab
Tim Rudd, Senior Researcher, Futurelab
Patrick Dillon, Professor of Telematics in Education, University of Exeter
Peter Humphreys, Chair, Personalise Education Now


Acknowledgements

This report draws upon the seminar series 'Beyond the Broadband Blackboard: Digital Technologies and Learner Voice' held by Futurelab, Demos, Becta and Toshiba between December 2004 and February 2005. The participants and speakers helped to inform and stimulate our thinking and a steering group of colleagues representing a variety of interests and organisations refined and challenged our conclusions. We are very grateful to the members of the steering group Martin Ripley (QCA), Chris Yapp (Microsoft), Bob Harrison (Toshiba), Matthew Horne (DfES) and Eileen Devonshire (ICT Consultant, DfES), to our colleagues at Futurelab and Demos and to others who will remain nameless. Though this report grew out of the seminar series, it should not be taken to represent views of the participants, and any errors and omissions remain our own.


Contents

Introduction
The Learner's Charter
Expanding the Charter: issues, examples and ideas
Summary and next steps
Putting the charter into practice
Further reading, references and projects


Introduction

The logic of education systems should be reversed so that it is the system that conforms to the learner, rather than the learner to the system. This is the essence of personalisation. It demands a system capable of offering bespoke support for each individual that recognises and builds upon their diverse strengths, interests, abilities and needs in order to foster engaged and independent learners able to reach their full potential.

This challenge has generated much debate as people explore how to respond, both intellectually and practically. For many teachers, the idea of personalisation is familiar and is one of the ideals that brought them into the profession. However, at times, the assessment, funding and institutional contexts in which they operate act not as a driving force for personalisation but as a barrier to it. Personalisation asks us how these systems can be re-shaped around the needs of the learner.

This paper aims to contribute to this debate by articulating a range of ways in which we might move forward in achieving these goals, specifically by harnessing the potential of digital technologies in four key areas central to the goals of personalisation: enabling learners to make informed educational choices; diversifying and acknowledging different forms of skills and knowledge; the creation of diverse learning environments; and the development of learner-focused forms of assessment and feedback.

This paper is not attempting to predict the future - either in terms of educational systems or the digital tools that might emerge to support them - but to outline clearly a set of challenges and opportunities that might form the basis for dialogue about a personalised learning landscape and the role of digital resources in enabling and shaping this arena. In this way it aims to contribute directly to the debates emerging from, for example, the DfES e-Strategy and Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners¹ which prioritise the development of personalised, collaborative learning spaces.


Why focus on the contribution of digital technologies to personalisation?

Our focus in this paper on the role of digital technologies is not driven by a naïve or interested desire to extend the use of technology in schools for its own sake. Instead it is driven by, on the one hand, an urgent sense that without the use of these resources, it is hard to conceive how the systemic change needed to reshape the education system around the learner can be achieved; and on the other, an awareness that many learners today are already creating personalised learning environments for themselves outside school using digital resources.

For most young people, technology is part of their daily lives. It has been suggested that by the age of 21 the average person will have spent 15,000 hours in formal education, 20,000 hours in front of the TV, and 50,000 hours in front of a computer screen². Those young people with access to digital technologies are already using these resources to tailor their informal learning to their own interests, to access information of relevance to them, to communicate with people who can support their learning, and to share ideas and expertise within informal learning communities³. While the concept of the 'digital native' may be over-used and under-researched⁴, it is clear that for many young people their digital learning landscape already affords them a high degree of personalisation which is currently unacknowledged by their formal school experiences.


¹DFES 5 year strategy: www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/5yearstrategy/; DFES E-strategy: www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/
²Futures of Learning Seminars, Future Learning Practice; seminar report June 2005
³Gee (2003); Williamson and Facer (2003)
⁴Owen (2004)


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