Jun 16 2022

Adaptive Performance-Based Learning in an Enterprise Context

What’s now referred to as Adaptive Learning has been around for a long time IMX.

Once the Performance Goals were established via Analysis, and the Learning Goals in turn in Analysis or in Design depending on how one framed their version of ADDIE, Testing for both Performance and Learning could be produced that could serve as Pre-Tests – used for testing out, and Post-Tests – used to determine that the learning prescribed had been accomplished – which was the primary evaluation measure popularly known as Level 2: Mastery.

My issue with many (but not all) approaches to Adaptive Learning, is that so many seem to think they can get by without doing a Performance Analysis and a Knowledge/Skill Analysis – along with a Target Audience Analysis.

The Learning Guild offers research from the summer of 2021 on ADAPTIVE AND PERSONALIZED LEARNING EXPERIENCES – here. This research work was done by Chad Udel and Dr. Jennifer Murphy.

Their definition, from a survey they did, includes:

An LMS providing a learner more advanced content
based on their grade in the previous section of a course.

I would quibble with that definition for use in an Enterprise Learning Context – as it omits any anchor back to the authentic Performance Requirements back on the job. That definition seems more aligned to an Educational Learning Context – where it fits perfectly.

That’s at the heart and been the difference between “Training and Education” that’s been argued about since before I got into the field back in 1979. Bob Mager (Robert F. if you prefer – or are searching) – so famously put it this way back in the early 1980s – which was:

“You Already Know the Difference in Education versus Training – and I’ll prove it to you.
Say that your daughter goes off to college and writes home (this was the 1980s) that
she has enrolled in a Sex Education course. Or that she writes to tell you she’s
enrolled in a Sex Training course.”

Resources

Many of my recent books have addressed Analysis – which would be central to Adaptive Learning in an Enterprise Learning Context – within the larger context of an entire Instructional Development process, and certain narrower aspects of Instructional Design and Development.

You can see them all on my Amazon Author’s Page – here.

Here are a few of my 30+ books since my first book in 1994:

2020