Thursday, April 24, 2014

Learning or Working at different paces?

Much of the discussion of the benefits of blended and self paced/mastery learning comes from an assumption the biggest factor that limits students' ability to succeed is that each student learns at a different pace and learns best in different ways.

There's no doubt that there is some truth in this, but from what I've seen, the single most important factor that affects students' ability to succeed is not that they learn at different paces, but that they work at different paces. In other words, the level of effort put forth seems to make the most difference. If a student doesn't work hard enough, there are most likely going to be problems no matter what type of instruction is provided. Moreover, slowing down the pace (through self pacing) for some of these students has not seemed to help, but rather to enable them to fall further and further behind. It seems like they work harder when we all move together at the same pace.

While there are definitely benefits to self paced and blended learning, the challenges should not be ignored. One of the biggest challenges is that slowing down (through self pacing) for a student who is working hard but needs extra help is useful, but slowing down (through self pacing) for a student that is not working hard enough is actually harmful.


1 comment:

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