Are Open Education Resources Ready for Adaptive-Learning Technology? - Digital Education - Education Week

"Hoping to bring its adaptive technology directly to students, teachers, and creators of 'open' educational content, ed-tech company Knewton announced Wednesday the launch of a new online platform that relies on big data to match individual learners to the specific instructional materials that are ostensibly best-suited to their own learning needs and styles.    The announcement marks the most aggressive attempt to date to merge such algorithm-based personalization—increasingly popular among both assessment makers and educational publishers—to the burgeoning world of open educational resources, or OER ... Leaders in the OER community expressed enthusiasm about the general possibility of making 'open' material (which is licensed in such a way as to be available for free use, revision, and sharing) adaptive. They believe the type of advanced learning analytics pioneered by companies such as Knewton might help solve one of their field's central challenges: how to quickly surface the best content from among the millions of open educational resources now housed in numerous content repositories and countless individual websites.  But it remains to be seen if educators, the public, or the OER content creators will embrace the specifics of Knewton's approach.  Many remain skeptical of big-data and algorithm-driven education, especially in an era of heightened concern around student data privacy.  Educators may also be skeptical of Knewton's apparent 'presumption that content alone can help students master skills and concepts,' said Cable T. Green, the director of global learning for Creative Commons, a nonprofit that encourages the use and sharing of open tools and information ... Here's how the company's new platform works:  Students and other users can sign up directly at knewton.com. After a brief registration process, they can select the subject area, topic, and specific skills they are interested in, then click a button that says "start learning." Immediately, the user will be introduced to content that is algorithmically selected to diagnose what he or she already knows.  As soon as the student begins interacting with that content, Knewton begins harvesting reams of data and comparing that information to the data already collected on the company's millions of other users. Through a mind-boggling series of probability calculations, Knewton's algorithms then begin determining which content is most likely to help the user learn what he or she has not yet mastered in the most efficient, engaging way possible.  At the same time, teachers and other creators of instructional materials can upload their lessons, YouTube videos, and the like to the site for free ..."