Personalised learning: The future of higher education?

The challenges and opportunities posed by personalised learning – offering students tailored learning experiences, largely made possible through the greater use of educational technology – will be the focus of a major international conference at UNSW next week (Thurs and Fri 23-24 October).

The two-day Universitas 21 Educational Innovation Annual Conference, convened by UNSW’s Director of Learning and Teaching Professor Stephen Marshall, will share ideas and practices for developing higher quality learning experiences for students.

“While the availability of new technologies provides us with a vast array of new opportunities to support more personalised approaches to teaching and learning, how to do this at scale, in a sustainable and cost effective way, requires careful analysis and planning,” says Universitas 21 immediate past president, UNSW Vice-Chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer.

“And what this might mean for program and course design, staff training and development, or the development of our campus infrastructures – physical, technological, and administrative – also requires investigation.”

Academic Lead for the conference, the University College Dublin’s Professor Bairbre Redmond, says the topic this year provides a bridge between debates that took place in 2012 and 2013 “on the overall challenges of online learning to a focus on the student experience and how technology can adapt educational opportunities to respond to different learning and lifestyles”.

Keynote speakers include:

• Professor Simon Bates, University of British Columbia – Personalised Learning: Implications for curricula, staff and students.
• Professor Simon Buckingham Shum, University of Technology, Sydney – Personalised Learning: The role of data and learning analytics in the personalisation of learning.
• Professor Eric Grimson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Personalised Learning: Developing institutional capacity for the personalisation of learning and the implications for the development of institutional infrastructure.

A student panel will also be convened: What does personalisation of learning mean to you?

N.B This is invite-only event. The keynote addresses and student panel will be live streamed.

What: U21 Annual Educational Innovation Conference – ­ personalised learning

When: Thursday and Friday, 23–24 October

Where: Scientia Building, UNSW Kensington campus.

Media contact: Steve Offner, UNSW Media Office, 02 9385 1583 or 0424 580 208