Let's be honest: as an academic term of art, personalized learning is horrible. It has almost no descriptive value. What does it mean to "personalize" learning? Isn't learning, which is done by individual learners, inherently personal? What would it mean to personalize learning? And who would want unpersonalized learning?
The authors offer a framework—based on three years of campus visits—for thinking about (1) the circumstances under which personalized learning can help students and (2) the best way to evaluate the real educational value for products that are marketed under the personalized learning banner.