By:- Mr. Vivek Iyer, Managing Director, D2L India
If you enter a university classroom today in India, you will see that the lecture format has barely changed at all over the years. Lecture halls are large and filled with hundreds of students, there is one single instructor teaching the class at a set pace from a single printed syllabus. As you leave the classroom for the day to begin using digital learning tools, you will quickly discover that what you experience on these tools is very different from what you're familiar with.
The higher education system in India is at a point in time where it can completely change the way it has operated for decades. Thanks to the National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020, the Government of India has mandated that higher education institutions be delivered using an outcome-based approach by implementing a flexible pedagogy for students who seek to complete their studies through different pathways. At the same time, the University Grants Commission has implemented open and distance learning standards that encourage the use of online delivery in HEIs, effectively saying that HEIs need to start responding to the needs of students in ways that they never considered possible.
Ultimately, this is the vision of education that has been known as personalized learning. Fortunately for many educators, many of the principles of personalized learning are much more within reach than they thought were possible.
The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All
The experiences of a typical first-year B.Tech class at a medium-sized private university illustrate how two groups of students enter college from two different educational backgrounds: One group will be ready to learn calculus; another group will require additional preparation to learn calculus. There are also students who are returning to their studies after being out of school for several years while maintaining a job and family, and there are students who recently completed the Class 12 exam and have yet to learn how to study independently.
Using one uniform design to teach all these learners is both an inefficient use of resources and results in a high number of dropouts. Furthermore, it leads to many graduates entering the job market unprepared.
Personalized learning changes the paradigm by eliminating an assumed average learner in any given course and designing and delivering course materials and feedback to fit the needs and progress of each specific learner.
What Personalization Actually Looks Like in Practice
Personalized education is not about providing each student with their primary content. The emphasis is on using an appropriate framework to provide responsive educational delivery.
A well-configured learning management system enables educators to implement personalized learning on a greater scale. For example, when a student watches a video lecture on thermodynamics and takes a quiz on it, the LMS tracks not just the student's score, but which questions the student struggled at, what concepts the student needs to strengthen, and what the patterns were across the students in the cohort. By reviewing the data, the educator may identify that a high percentage of students in the cohort failed to demonstrate a clear understanding of a specific concept; therefore, the educator knows to review it further in class or provide alternative resources. Additionally, the educator may identify a student who has demonstrated mastery of foundational modules and automatically make advanced content available to that student. Conversely, the educator will be able to use the LMS data as a means of encouraging a student who is falling behind or creating a lower-touch remediation plan for that student before large gaps develop in academic performance.
This is what adaptive learning looks like when applied appropriately: ongoing, implicit, and one-to-one.
The Role of the LMS as Infrastructure
This is where many Indian colleges and universities remain behind. LMSs are usually used as storage facilities for lecture notes, assignments, etc. By doing so, they are leaving a tremendous amount of opportunity on the table.
Contemporary learning management systems are founded on the interdependency of learner behaviour and design. They allow teachers to set appropriate 'smart' conditions for students to access the next module: for instance, once a student successfully completes Module 1, they can immediately move on to Module 2; if a student instead struggles with Module 1, they will receive additional support quickly rather than waiting until the end of the week when everyone else has moved ahead.
LMSs provide faculty with immediate feedback about the level of engagement and performance from the beginning of the semester, rather than just the end of the semester, and provide early warning indicators of students who have yet to master the material.
Many institutions are already witnessing some of the transformations that this type of infrastructure can facilitate. This is not about replacing the teacher; it is about providing the instructor with tools and resources to actually respond to student learning in a timely manner, which would have been virtually impossible when 'data' meant a pile of paper tests graded weeks after the end of the course.
Making It Work on Indian Campuses
Genuine institutional commitment is needed to facilitate a shift toward Student Centered Learning. In the Indian context, the pupil–teacher ratio currently stands at 26:1, which is one of the worst ratios in the world highlights the scale of the challenge in delivering individualized attention. While expanding the pool of skilled faculty will take time, technology offers immediate opportunities to enhance learning. Learning Management Systems (LMSs), in particular, can support personalized education by complementing teachers’ efforts and ensuring that students receive tailored guidance despite large class sizes. Faculty need training, not only in the use of technology but also in how to read learning analytics and adapt their teaching style. Curriculum teams must also be equipped with the knowledge that content can be modular and tagged so that the system can provide contextually relevant instruction.
The benefits of Student Centered Learning are real, including higher levels of engagement, higher rates of completion, and degrees for graduates who have actually learned rather than just passing.
Millions of students are produced in India every year, and there is no question that individualized learning is needed; However, there is a question about how quickly colleges/universities can transition from knowing Student Centered Learning is important to incorporating it into the teaching process.
The technology and research exists, but we now need to act on this!
