With over three decades of experience in the Education and Skill Development industry, when Manoj Chawla stepped into the role of Chief Business Officer at TriByte Technologies, his vision was clear: to promote technology solutions in education for dissemination of education at scale, while ensuring high quality of program delivery at affordable price-points. In the process, move traditional classroom delivery to online/digital learning. Prior to TriByte Technologies, Manoj has built a vast amount of experience as CEO and Business leadership positions at Wadhwani Foundation, Everonn Education, NIIT, NIS Sparta (a Reliance group co), Vidyanext amongst others. His expertise in EdTech deployment has helped the team to access Enterprises, Education Institutions (K-12, Test prep, Universities), as well as Skill Development & Training companies.
For many students, test prep is a daunting challenge. Textbooks and note cards and course material can be challenging to get through and if a student doesn’t perform well in a practice test, then that can lower their confidence. With the help of technology, there are several methods to learn. One such method is adaptive learning.
Adaptive learning is popular amongst many educators and prep centers – mainly because it decenters rote learning and focuses on the unique needs of every student. Test prep is a particularly challenging aspect of education: mainly because the subject material is vast, and the resources are few. Many test centers focus on improving a student’s memory, rather than building a holistic approach to studying.
Adaptive learning is a methodology that uses data science and machine learning to deliver learning experiences that are tailored and personalized to each student’s academic needs.
A test that uses adaptive learning alters the questions based on how the student answers the previous one. For example, if a learner answers Q1 incorrectly, Q2 will be easier, and so on.
Why Adaptive Learning Helps Test Prep
Let’s look at a scenario. When you think of test prep, you probably think of a student surrounded by piles of textbooks and notecards. You may also think of a classroom full of students being taught a concept by one instructor. That is the conventional method of teaching and exam prep.
Another scenario might be one teacher instructing only one student about a particular concept. That teacher may alter explanations, introduce new ideas – based on how the learner responds. That teacher is adapting to the student’s needs. This is easier to do on a one-on-one session, but tough when it’s with more people. This is where technology comes in.
Adaptive learning aims to supplement the teaching gap by adapting to each learner’s understanding and requirement using technology. By using algorithms, adaptive learning can shape the teaching experience and the subject material to every learner – by providing extra content, additional help, supplementary resources, etc. This is particularly helpful in test prep because there’s no defined curriculum or assigned textbook.
- Students can learn at their own speed by choosing the approach that works the best for their needs. They may jump right into answering questions or start by reading the course material. Whatever their approach, adaptive learning can tailor the content experience.
- Adaptive learning can also help identify pain points and knowledge gaps. If a student is consistently underperforming in one area, adaptive learning can help shift the focus by offering additional content help, emphasize important points, and highlight areas of improvement.
- Using adaptive learning tech also delivers personalized experiences – for a student who’s prepping for a test, adaptive learning can identify areas where he/she can improve, get a better understanding of content, and reduce lack of understanding.
Adaptive learning has the opportunity to expand the student’s access to different learning methodologies. The test prep industry can also benefit from using adaptive tech to monitor the trends of student performance and build future tests that way.