Even if schools strived to offer the best support and equitable distance learning opportunities, this was not always possible. Not all educational institutions could properly equip all their teachers with technology to ensure a smooth remote teaching experience. Some students also fell behind because of outdated devices or weak internet connections.
This mix of factors increased learning gaps at individual, class, institutional, and state levels. Once they happen, learning gaps are hard to close. It takes weeks or even months to put students back on track. It’s not easy to make up for missing classes and competencies.
If technology is one of the main factors that kept learning afloat during the lockdown, it is also key in closing learning gaps. An intelligent learning platform (ILP) is one of the solutions schools can rely on for this purpose.
Learning gaps are the difference between what students should have learned through a specific curriculum and what they learned in reality.
For example, in a foreign language class, the objective can be for students to progress from beginner to pre-intermediate level in one year. Students who demonstrate a beginner’s competency level by the end of the year have a learning gap.
Leaning gaps happen for different reasons:
Learning gaps vary a lot in complexity and intensity. Some are quite easy to close. For example, a student missing one class is a problem teachers can tackle with a bit of extra support. On their side, students simply have to put in more effort to make up for that missing class through individual study.
Other gaps are harder to cope with, especially if they affect many students or the entire classroom. These gaps need careful analysis and prompt intervention, which requires the joint effort of teachers, parents, and other school staff members.
There are different types of learning gaps, but usually, they all fall into one of these five categories:
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Closing learning gaps is impossible without first identifying them. Teachers need to understand their nature, scale (how many students are affected), and come up with an action plan to close them. Learning gaps are rarely an issue time can solve. Students and teachers have to take active steps to close them.
The main ways to identify learning gaps are through observation and evaluation:
Learning gaps are easier to close thanks to learning technology that automatically tracks student progress and detects them early. So, teachers can close learning gaps faster, before they become harder to manage. The type of technology that has the highest potential to do this is the intelligent learning platform (ILP). This AI-based tool offers different goal and progress tracking features, as well as competency-based learning tools and custom content recommendations.
All of these features work together to help students acquire knowledge, prove their mastery, and slowly progress through the educational content at their own pace, thus avoiding learning gaps.
The end result is a lean learning, teaching, and evaluation process where no student is left behind. Thanks to this, more severe problems such as students dropping out of school can be avoided.
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An ILP can help identify and close learning gaps via data analysis. Tapping into the immense potential of data is not just for the corporate world. Schools and universities can streamline their activity and provide better services by leveraging the potential of data.
The first step in understanding how well a student performs is to make sure your classes offer relevant competencies and that these are clear and consistent with their content. ILPs have dedicated features that help you do this via competency-based learning. These capabilities allow teachers to associate competencies to the content they teach and the assignments students need to complete.
Students who don’t perform well don’t prove mastery of a certain competency. Therefore, they can go through the content again and retake the assignment. Only after successfully completing it, they can move on to the next topic.
The ILP also provides a faster way to assess student knowledge via the ILP’s competency-related quiz system. By taking a quick quiz, students and teachers can immediately see where the first are at and if there are any knowledge gaps.
The platform checks quizzes in real-time and displays their results in an intuitive dashboard. Students can also rely on these quizzes to self-assess their competencies. Individual performance is available in the system, as well as a results overview of a larger group of users. These tests can serve at the beginning of the semester too. Teachers can use them as a diagnostic assessment to establish their students’ competency level.
The purpose of competency-based learning is to ensure students acquire the skills they need before they progress to the next level. This is also one of the most efficient teaching methods that prevent knowledge gaps.
Read more: How to make competency-based education possible through an intelligent learning platform
Once teachers identify learning gaps, it’s very important to take action immediately. The ILP’s automation feature helps spot these gaps and also notifies teachers so they have the chance to do something about them.
All they have to do is choose the actions that they want to take.
For example, a teacher sets a necessary minimum threshold students must achieve in their class for a specific competency, such as:
The idea is that it’s up to each teacher to evaluate what is the appropriate way to spot these learning gaps.
If students don’t reach the percentage needed after completing their lessons and assignments, teachers can set specific rules to tell the platform what to do, which enables the platform to take action:
Here is a list of recommended actions that help close learning gaps:
An ILP can help students close knowledge gaps, requiring minimum teacher intervention. This helps educators save time, especially when it comes to curating content and recommending the appropriate resources for students. This is possible thanks to these platforms’ powerful artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. These algorithms analyze student performance and detect learning gaps.
This is how it works:
Personalized recommendations can include:
Thanks to this smart recommendations engine, teachers enjoy the benefit of having a virtual teaching assistant that makes sure students don’t lag behind on their assignments and competency achievement. Therefore, teachers can also tweak the recommendations engine according to what their students need.
Read more: 4 Ways teachers can use edtech to create personalized learning experiences for students
Learning gaps in education are inevitable. Students don’t learn at the same pace and there are also external factors that affect their performance. However, teachers can spot and close these gaps with the help of technology. An ILP is one of the technologies that make this possible through accurate performance analysis and custom content recommendations.