The Great Adaptive Learning Experiment

Higher education is in the midst of a kind of Renaissance. A flurry of activity and experimentation around adaptive learning is taking place on college and university campuses, thanks to a high-profile, targeted grant program from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the relatively recent emergence of sophisticated adaptive learning software and platforms; and nascent partnerships among schools and learning content publishers. Institutions around the world are engaged in serious explorations of the potential of an approach to instruction and remediation that uses technology and accumulated data to provide customized program adjustments based on an individual student's level of demonstrated mastery.