June 25, 2012
Rick Friedman for The Chronicle
Chris
Dede (shown here on screen), a professor of learning technologies at
Harvard, says classrooms of the future will have “a more complicated
model of teacher performance that, when they know how to do it, teachers
are going to appreciate.”
Most college courses are one-size-fits-all—a lecturer delivers the same information to everyone in the room, regardless of whether some students already know the material or others are utterly lost.
It doesn't have to be that way, says Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University. He outlines a vision of how technology can help personalize learning in a new book that he co-edited, called Digital Teaching Platforms: Customizing Classroom Learning for Each Student.
His research focuses on elementary- and high-school classrooms, but he says the approach has implications for colleges as well. The Chronicle talked with Mr. Dede about his strategy, and why he sees big changes on the horizon. And edited version of the conversation follows.
