Adaptive Learning

Adaptive learning, also known as adaptive teaching, is an educational method that uses computer algorithms and artificial intelligence to orchestrate the interaction with a learner and deliver customized resources and learning activities addressing that learner's own needs. Computers adapt the presentation of material according to a student's learning needs as indicated by their responses to questions, tasks and experiences, drawing on computer science, artificial intelligence, psychometrics, education, psychology and brain science; in professional learning contexts a learner may also be allowed to test out of some training to focus on genuinely novel instruction. Adaptive learning is partly driven by the recognition that tailored, individualized learning cannot be achieved at large scale through traditional, non-adaptive approaches, and adaptive systems aim to transform a learner from a passive receiver of information into a collaborator in their own education; the approach has been built as desktop applications, web applications and, increasingly, as part of whole curricula, and its primary use is in education though it is also applied to business training.