Evolution in Education: Shift from Traditional to Personalised Learning

Education, or learning, is a term with a wide range of meanings. Simply put, it is a process of giving out and or receiving systematic instruction and information, much like what we experience in the different educational institutions. Contrary to popular belief, being learned or being educated does not mean someone with academic prowess alone. Instead, education is an enlightening experience. It has the power to transform an individual, helping him or her to make the right decisions, to choose a course of life that is rightfully theirs, through personalised learning. But what exactly is personalised learning? Read on to find out!

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Being Educated: The Many Perks of Learning

Education is truly a gift to mankind. A person who is educated is bestowed with the knowledge that is untouched by the common man. Education makes him or her aware of all that is around him, quenching their thirst regarding the operations of the world, and helping them seek a better version of themselves.

Don’t believe us? Well, here is a list of all the wonderful ways in which learning or education is helpful to mankind, also including anything and everything that surrounds us.

• A Secured Future: Education helps secure a good future, and this is one of the top reasons that education is pursued by people. Being learned, with appropriate degrees from educational institutions helps secure good career options, helping them chart out the future course of life, thus ensuring a good future for an individual.
• Holistic Development: The term holistic development simply refers to the complete development of an individual. The right education ensures the holistic development of an individual, thus ensuring that a person is emotionally, mentally, physically and socially developed. Holistic development further helps in the growth and development of individuals.
• Dawn of Realisation: Education makes a person aware of so many things and concepts that they were earlier unaware of. As a person is educated, he or she learns more about their culture, their country, the people around them, and even about the origins of the world. Such realisations also aid in the process of modernisation, teaching individuals to march forward into the modern world.
• Bridging Borders: Opening the doors to brotherhood and unity, education exposes one to people from all around the world, their customs, religions and even the struggles that they suffer. Schools and colleges consist of people from diverse backgrounds, thus facilitating communication between them. Education even empowers people to march forward towards establishing peace between different communities.
• A Prosperous Life: Education has the potential to guarantee a happy and prosperous future life. As a person becomes educated, he or she becomes able to secure a good job, and a good career that provides well for them and his/ her family. Such benefits derived from education then go on to provide a happy and prosperous life to an individual.

Eminent Changes in the Educational Sector

Education, as we know it now, has surely come a long way. It has evolved from a pursuit of the royals and the noblemen to a democratic right that guarantees the right to education for every individual.

The last hundred years alone have witnessed drastic changes when it comes to the evolution of education. Let us have a look at the most prominent changes that have made modern education what it is today.

• 1852: Massachusetts became the first example to pass a mandatory education law.
• 1875: The US became the first country to introduce free public education.
• 1948: UNESCO's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the Right to Education.
• 1960: Introduction of Personalised Learning
• 2008: UNESCO introduces Inclusive Education as the “Way of the Future”.
• 2020: Thanks to Covid-19, online education became the new norm.

In India, education in the yesteryears was in the form of ‘Gurukuls’. Run by a ‘Guru’ and ‘Gurumaa’, Gurukuls housed young princes and sons of noblemen, educating them in the ‘Shastras’, archery, politics and several other aspects that ensured that they were capable of ruling a province smoothly.

Then, as education was introduced to the common man in India, learning was a matter of sitting under trees in groups, with a teacher educating them with basic concepts like the alphabet, basic mathematics etc. The concept of educational institutions in India was introduced only around the time of British rule.

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Personalized Learning: How is it better than Traditional Learning?

As the term seems to suggest, personalized learning simply means a more personal approach to learning. To put it simply, personalized learning is an approach to education that aims to customize learning as per each of the individuals' needs, strengths and weaknesses of each of the kids.

The personalized approach to learning is rapidly gaining momentum in the modern field of education. This growing application of personalized learning is rightly so as it has so much more to offer than the traditional method of teaching and learning. Here are a few points to highlight the benefits of personalized learning over traditional learning a little clearer.

• Undivided Attention: Personalized learning ensures undivided attention to an individual. Unlike traditional learning, personalized learning provides students with one-on-one tutoring, thus facilitating educators to have a better understanding of the individual learning needs of their students instead of focusing on them as a whole.
• Student-Centric: The personalized approach to learning is more student-centric as compared to the traditional model of learning. With individual attention to the learning needs of a child, personalized learning adopts a child-centric curriculum, thus choosing one or a blend of curricula that caters best to the learning needs of the child.
• Facilitates Interaction: Traditional methods of learning often go on to become a sort of one-way communication, with the students seldom interacting in matters of learning. This doesn't happen in personalized learning. In the personalized approach, students are encouraged to take matters into their own hands. They are encouraged to ask questions and also to seek answers on their own, without relying on anyone else.
• Learning Pace: The traditional model of learning focuses more on the completion of the syllabus in a fixed time rather than checking the learning pace of the students. However, in personalized learning, learning paces in accordance with the pace of the students. Students are encouraged to learn at their own pace and not worry about being left behind.

Implementing Personalized Learning Strategies

Given the many benefits of personalized learning, it is no wonder that schools and parents are urgently seeking to try and implement the same for their children. Here are a few tips that one can adopt to get started in the process of implementing personalized learning strategies.

• The best start is to educate the teachers regarding the assessment of students while customizing their experience accordingly.
• Encourage teachers to get together and discuss the ideas and learning methods that they can resort to for facilitating personalized learning.
• Employ technical learning aids that can make individual tracking of the students' learning a smooth and easier process.
• Promote self-efficacy in students, and let them have a say in the kind of educational experience that they are looking for.
• Encourage a flexible classroom experience, and facilitate students to learn at their own pace.

Sheoran International School is an eminent example of the few schools that have been successful at implementing personalized learning, thus ensuring the best for their children. Operating under the aegis of the Jyoti Educational Society, Sheoran International School is affiliated with CBSE, known for its impressive student-teacher ratio of 25:1.

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Sheoran’s parent institution, Jyoti Educational School was founded to make education accessible to children belonging to the rural areas. Keeping with this dictum, Sheoran International School promotes education for all by making learning a fun process. “Play, Learn, Innovate and Experience” is what educators at Sheoran strive to achieve.

The educators at Sheoran believe that “a good school is where students can study in a stress-free environment and enjoy the freedom to ask thought-provoking questions”. They encourage their students to be curious as learning stems from curiosity. At Sheoran, mistakes committed by students are not frowned upon as they believe in propagating the practice of learning from one’s mistakes. Here, children are transformed not just into mere students but lifelong learners.