A teacher’s role, education enthusiasts say, involves monitoring students, preparing lessons, delivering content, and generating assignments, among other things.
However, educators say, every so often there aren’t enough hours to ensure that each student gets the instruction they need to move to the next level. In this regard, that they believe individualised learning should be fortified.
Individualised learning or individualised instruction is a method of teaching in which content, instructional technology, and pace of learning is based on the abilities and interests of each learner.
This is where instructional environments are tailored to the needs, skills, and interests of each student.
Why it’s essential
Aminadhad Niyonshuti, an English teacher in Kigali, says individualised learning gives students choices on how to learn based on their interests, abilities, and teacher recommendations.
When it comes to personalised learning, he says, teachers are arguably more important than ever, especially when it comes to preparing students to navigate the digital world successfully and understand the importance of media literacy in their education and personal lives.
"Ensure individualised learning happens smoothly,” Niyonshuti says, adding, "Teachers can be the guides that shape educational experiences for their students, helping them engage with learning tools that will enrich and support deeper learning, including different types of technology.”
Also, he notes that teachers can use technology platforms to support data-driven learning, personalising learning to students’ interests, passions, strengths, and needs.
"Interactions with teachers and peers sharpen a student’s thinking, provoke new interests, and provide insights to the learners,” Niyonshuti says.
To gain a clear sense of the importance of personalised learning, Paul Nsabimana, a teacher at St Patrick in Kicukiro, says it helps to envision how personalised learning can take shape in the classroom.
For instance, he says a practical way to personalised learning is through classroom activities.
"The goal of a lesson might be for all students to reach understanding on a certain topic, but individual students may participate in different activities to attain that understanding,” he says.
When applied correctly, he says personalised learning can be of more beneficial to students.
He explains that this means that assignments and instructions are tailored to individual interests, needs, and skills.
"It allows the teacher to bring in more useful and varied material into the classroom. It also opens up probabilities for strategic groupings to allow students to learn better from one another,” he says.
Nsabimana says when learning is personalised, every student is occupied with the right material and instruction to challenge them appropriately and get them to the next level.
Technology and individualised learning
It is evident that technology helps individualise the learning process, making better use of learning time.
Although the teacher can by no means be replaced in the classroom, Niyonshuti says hardware devices and adaptive learning technologies can still help to improve students’ educational experiences.
Providing truly differentiated and individualised instruction has been a goal of educators for decades, but new technologies available today are empowering schools to implement this form of education in a way never before possible.
Meanwhile, different studies have shown that adaptive learning and intelligent adaptive learning technology in particular, which tailors learning to the individual student, provides many benefits for students and educators.