I have been following the Knewton story for a while. I actually I have been following the perpetual promise of technology enhanced adaptive learning since the early 90’s. Remember Authorware? We used to build adaptive learning arrays that enabled systematic instruction based systems to adapt to the response a learner provided. Remember a system from Austria called Hyperwave? It was heralded as the first web-based adaptive learning system in the 90’s and chances are most people have neither heard of it nor recall it. Remember the early promises about adaptive learning with system like WebCT, Courseinfo, and even Blackboard? The adaptive learning holy grail has been pursued by many of us in educational technology for a long time. There is a serious shortcoming to most adaptive learning systems, one that I hope Knewton can overcome. Unfortunately, by their own admission, their system is faced with the same challenges as all the other adaptive learning systems. Consider the following quote:
Knewton can power anything where there’s a “right” answer — that’s all of math for much of K-14. We also can power most of verbal skills, since most people agree on what constitutes good writing, like grammar, sentence structure and topic sentences.
The things we can’t power are things like art or ballet or philosophy, where there’s no right answer ever. But even what people think of as pretty subjective courses, there’s often a right answer.
One of the biggest challenges with any system that is based on making an adaptive decision is that there has to be a definitive right answer. We know from the research that this informational approach really only deals with superficial or surface learning. In contrast, learning processes that require application and integration involve much more subjective answers and are the substance of deeper learning. Unfortunately, Knewton isn’t able to go there. One of our biggest arguments for why liberal arts institutions like Concordia hold much more promise for future learning than any adaptive learning system is that a liberal arts education means learners do not just deal with the right answer, they go much much deeper. Systems like Knewton will continue to evolve and for some aspects of education where the right answer is necessary these system may be useful and I am excited to see them evolve. But for the really complex problems of the world that require very complex interdisciplinary approaches system like Knewton just don’t go deep enough–only institutions like Concordia can provide this depth and interdisciplinary foundation.
