Category: News

In a recent article for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Dale Basye raised an important question: are the terms personalized learning, differentiated learning and individualized learning meaningfully different? Are they interchangeable, or are they distinctive terms, describing alternate approaches to education?

The answer, argues Basye, is that the terms are very different, and the difference is important. The unique interests and needs of students require diverse approaches to teaching and learning; and crucially, only by using a consistent vocabulary for these approaches can educators share best practice and deploy the right tools to create what Basye describes as “profoundly dynamic educational experiences”. So, what do these terms mean, and how do the three approaches differ?

Differentiated learning: who is the learner, and what do they need?

Even where there are overarching learning goals, teachers may still vary their instruction to meet the individual needs and preferences of students, or a group of similar students. This differentiation might involve varying the learning path, product, process, content or even subject matter in order to address the specific learning profile of students. This is not about writing a different lesson plan for each student, but it is about adapting the curriculum, varying the level of challenge, and altering the path to learning. This flexibility makes the learning experience more relevant, engaging and effective.

Individualized learning: at what pace does the learner learn?

As well as varying how a student learns, teachers may govern when they learn, by changing the pace of progress through the curriculum. The benefits of this individualized learning are many: students may spend more time on a challenging topic, move quickly past one they have mastered, or dive deeply into a topic they want to explore in more detail. All this helps the teachers to achieve the prescribed academic goals, without losing anything – or anyone – along the way.

Personalized learning: how might the learner learn for themselves?

Basye describes personalized learning as the “whole enchilada”: neither differentiated nor individualized, but both. It is instruction that is varied to meet the specific learning needs of students, and paced according to their readiness and interest. But it’s more than that. In true personalized learning, the student plays a part in their own instruction, choosing activities, resources or learning paths that best suit their interests and abilities. This is true learner-centred education, and so for teachers, it represents a stark departure from tradition, placing them in the role of guide or facilitator, rather than instructor. Given the unique demands of each student engaged in personalized learning, educational technology would appear to have a particularly important role to play. So that, in a nutshell, is the meaning of the terms, and the differences between them. In the conclusion of his article, Basye remarks that educational technology, when employed properly, has a role to play in all of these forms of instruction. We agree with him, so what exactly are we doing about it?

Measurement and response: the promise of technology

Essentially, each of these approaches involves managing individuality, which in technology terms, means managing vast amounts of constantly changing data. This is just what computers are made for. Digital learning resources, and the paths through them, can be altered by teachers to deliver the differentiated and individualized learning experiences we have discussed. There is much that can be measured and captured by computers in the learning process, such as scores, behaviours, interests, error types, speed and so on, and these advances have been exploited with some success by adaptive learning technologies to meet the demands of personalized learning. But does this really mean that out-of-the-box technology can address fully all of these learning approaches?

A collaboration between educators, students and technology

At Avallain, we recognize that the picture is more complex. Our technologies have all of the capabilities we have described, but we are aware that real digital learning requires a successful collaboration between educators, students and technology. A technology designed to deliver differentiated learning, but that places too much pressure upon teachers, or fails to address their specific concerns, will not work. Neither will a solution that promises true personalized learning, but that makes too many assumptions about the self-motivation or tech-savvy of the particular students, or that does not call enough upon the guidance of their teachers.

Solutions with uniqueness in mind

Avallain has always focused on devising very specific solutions for very specific audiences. Avallain Unity and Avallain Author are among the most flexible in the industry, because we build our platforms with the uniqueness of learning experiences in mind. Primary learners in Mexico, Academics in Oxford and German-learning immigrants learn with Avallain solutions, all using custom interfaces and guidance based on the same solid technology. Across the world, our technology is being used to deliver the full range of differentiated, individualized and personalized learning in a way that is meaningful and manageable for specific groups of teachers and students.

Basye finishes his piece with his comment that a common vocabulary will help educators to harness the tools they need to deliver “profoundly dynamic educational experiences”. We agree, and we believe that the best educational technology results from a creative dialogue between providers and educators, based on that common vocabulary, but also the specific need.

That is the Avallain approach, and that is how we build our technology.

Recent years have seen the invention of a plethora of new digital media, from self-marking activities to smart ebooks, from podcasts to animations and games. But even now, the print components of a course are often favoured by teachers and students as the crucial hub of a course, even when enhanced by these digital innovations.

Avallain has great respect for print, partly in recognition of educational tradition, and also acknowledging, as engineers, the technological superiority of print as an undemanding, always operational, visual and haptic carrier of information. Nevertheless we understand that for publishers, the duplication of effort between print and digital production creates a significant strain on time and budgets. It stands to reason that removing this duplication would enable the industry to give greater focus to creativity of commissioning, authorship and design, and to make full use of the strengths of each medium, separately, and in combination.

With these as our principles, we have long researched the ideal blend of print and digital workflows. This journey led us to our partner Seinet, a provider based in Madrid that has its origins in editorial content management systems for print magazines, but now provides smart content management to support the diverse needs of modern publishing. Their outstanding Xtent solution is centred upon an abstracted content database, and achieves flatpanel layouting, InDesign integration and many input and output transformations at scale and speed. Combining this power with Avallain Author, our authoring solution, provides something unique: transparent editing, output to print and digital, with the kind of version, state and permissions control you would expect from an advanced content management system.

Consider, then, a typical multi-component course involving textbooks and accompanying interactive content for apps and a learning platform. Discover a typo? One intervention fixes it for reprint, for download and immediate use online. Need to modify a heading in the app and carry that change through to the learning platform and the next print edition? One edit does it all. Keen to create new ancillary content for digital and then print a loose-leaf edition to go with it? We have you covered. And all this within a controlled, tracked workflow that retains the quality and editorial rigor expected in great publishing.

This integration of Avallain Author and Xtent is already being piloted at our major publishing clients, and we are excited by early results. If you would like to join the blended publishing revolution, please contact us to enter the program.

Ignacio Megasias, CEO of Seinet, says:

We are delighted to be working with Avallain to bring the best of content management to a new kind of educational publishing: one which frees authors and editors to focus on the quality and creativity of the content, while intelligent tools manage publication to a range of media and devices. In this way we hope to make educational publishing more efficient, more responsive, and at the same time, more innovative.”

Max Bondi, Product Manager of Avallain Author, says:

The pioneering blend of Avallain’s expertise in dynamic digital authoring, and Seinet’s pedigree in smart content management, promises a new era in educational publishing. Our integrated service provides publishers with new efficiencies, while extending their reach across print and digital. We are looking forward to involving other clients in our pilot project over the coming months.

Seinet is an independent, privately owned company based in Madrid, providing publishing platforms to the global education and media industries. Founded in 2001 with the mission to deliver a “create once, publish anywhere” content management solution, Seinet has moved from traditional print media to become the only content management system provider to integrate both publishing and e-learning functionality.

InDesign is a Trademark of Adobe.

A new exam-revision mobile application from Oxford University Press, developed in collaboration with Avallain, promises to transform the way children prepare for Kenya’s primary and secondary exams.

The ExamPoa app delivers on-demand bundles of quizzes, notes and model exams, which offer instant feedback, allowing students to test themselves, hone their studies and address areas of weakness. The app breaks new ground in distance learning for Kenyan schoolchildren, using mobile technology to reach learners throughout the vast country, and to offer them a more flexible and responsive form of study. The quizzes, notes and model exams may be downloaded and used offline, freeing learners to complete their revision anytime, anywhere. Prepared initially to support learners of English and Science at primary level, and English, Biology and History at secondary level, ExamPoa will expand over time to offer support in other subject areas.

James Ogolla, Marketing Manager at Oxford University Press East Africa said:

ExamPoa addresses an increasing demand from Kenya’s young students for digital resources that offer a level of feedback and support that is not always possible in class. Our engaging but rigorous resources, combined with Avallain’s reliable, intuitive technology, truly answer that call. We look forward to expanding the service to other areas of the curriculum.

We are delighted to have collaborated with Oxford University Press to develop such an innovative and valuable service for Kenya’s students,” commented Ursula Suter, Co-Founder of Avallain. “We have worked hard to ensure that our technology is appropriate to the needs of Kenya’s students, allowing them to study on a range of devices, with or without an Internet connection. But as ever, it is not the technology that we wish to be the focus, but the excitement and reward of a great learning experience. We know from early feedback from schoolchildren that ExamPoa is proving worthy of its Kiswahili name: Poa, meaning ‘good’ or ‘cool’!

Established in 1954, Oxford University Press East Africa is a leading educational publisher in the East and Central Africa region, specializing in school textbooks and reference works. It is a branch of the International Division of Oxford University Press.

Avallain is a world leader in the provision of educational technology. Co-founded by Ursula Suter in 2002, it has provided consultancy and online tools to governments, corporations, educational publishers and institutions around the globe. Avallain’s subsidiary in Nairobi, Kenya has produced a range of groundbreaking educational products for the local education system.

In collaboration with Avallain, University of Dayton Publishing (UDP) operates UDP Access, a state of the art learning management system that adapts to the real-life circumstances of students and teachers in Central and South America.

UDP Access overflows with the stimulating learning content that you would expect from a creative initiative involving an innovative publisher and Avallain: enhanced digital books, unique digital readers, online projects and, of course, hundreds of interactive activities enriched with diverse media and great design. But what makes this environment even more exceptional is its accessibility. While UDP Access is fully online, it is also available for download as a companion app for tablets and desktops, so that it may be enjoyed offline.

Lauren Robbins, Director of Publishing and Professional Services ELT at Grupo SM, notes:

Our relationship with Avallain has allowed our digital offer to evolve from simple interactive content, to our own ground breaking platform that supports users both online and – as is still typical in most classrooms – offline. We are delighted to have achieved a suite of digital services that fully supports teachers and learners, without technical distractions or obstacles.

Ursula Suter, Co-Founder of Avallain remarked:

Our engagement in Mexico started in 2013, led by our engaging and exciting work with UDP. Since then, our decision to invest in a local support presence has been vindicated again and again, by our great collaboration with UDP, by the general growth of the digital market in the region, and by the enthusiasm with which creative and targeted solutions are received.

University of Dayton Publishing is a publisher of print and digital ELT/ESL courses and support materials for preschool, primary and secondary schools in Mexico and Latin America. It is the result of the strategic alliance between the University of Dayton – a private university in Dayton, Ohio, USA – and the SM Group.

Are you struggling to publish rich, innovative products to an ever-increasing number of devices? Do you find it a challenge to control costs while maintaining compatibility with thousands of smartphones and tablets? More than ever, digital publishers are facing the risk of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) spiralling out of control and drawing investment away from creative authorship and publishing. With Avallain Author and Unity, you can innovate and keep control at the same time.

Publish once, deploy many times

Modern students and educators expect to learn and teach anywhere and anytime, making the most of the past decade’s explosion in mobile technologies. For publishers and content producers, this is both a commercial opportunity, and a threat. There are new providers and devices appearing for each niche in the marketplace, splintering distribution and pricing models, and creating ever more quality control demands. However, investment budgets for digital publishers do not tend to grow at the same rate.

What is needed is a technology that takes care of compatibility and delivery, and allows digital publishers to stay focused on innovation in content and interfaces. Avallain has spent years researching and innovating in some of the most challenging infrastructure environments, such as Africa, South America – and not least – the still poorly-connected and equipped classrooms in continental Europe. We have delivered digital learning across many technical divides, while keeping a lid on costs. Avallain’s current publishing technologies benefit from all this experience and represent a third generation solution to the “publish once, deploy many times” challenge.

A technology in layers: making the complex, simple.

Avallain Author gives publishers the means to prepare the highest quality learning resources with a customized user experience, then quality check them, and deploy them offline and online to desktops, tablets and smartphone apps. These apps may be either standalone offerings like the Award Winning Mazes for Richmond (Santillana), or integrated within the Avallain Unity learning platform as a standard companion app, as in UDP Access environment created for the University of Dayton Publishing (Grupo SM). Content generated in Avallain Author may also be published in standard formats into third party applications.

To enable publishers to author and QA once and deploy many times, Avallain’s technical architecture separates the presentation, interaction and communication features of the content from the destination environment and the native code needed for each situation. xAPI (TinCan) communication is employed to allow seamless synchronization between the devices and platforms and data warehouses. The underlying cross-platform technology is one of the current leading industry standards. It operates on existing and forthcoming devices, such as Raspberry Pi and Automobile Dashboard systems. The architecture works for any type of Avallain Author content, from digital books to collections of simple learning objects, to more complex, bespoke creations like the Richmond Mazes.

Cost-effective, stimulating learning – whatever the device

Developing and maintaining learning applications across the expanding technology landscape, while keeping control of cost and quality, is perhaps the single greatest commercial challenge faced by digital publishers. Avallain is the ideal partner to help you meet that challenge. Already, many of the world’s leading educational publishers and institutions are using Avallain Author to save time and money. And that is time and money that they are now able to spend doing what they do best: creating a viable, differentiated and stimulating learning experience – whatever the device.

As one of the key publishers for French as a Foreign Language (FLE) throughout the Francophone world, Éditions Maison des Langues (EMDL) is no stranger to innovation and driving new standards. However its newly-launched Espace Virtuel, a French language learning environment developed by Avallain and prepared on Avallain platforms, is set to change the way the French language is learned – and taught.

EMDL places its relationship with teachers at the heart of its publishing processes, using teacher workshops, surveys and conferences to ensure that its courses and methodologies are the most current and practical available. This approach has been critical to the development of Espace Virtuel as a responsive, integrated service, and one which embraces the principle of a ‘flipped classroom’, while also supporting traditional classroom learning. Searches filtered by grammar and language point allow teachers to assemble the resources that best suit their course and their class, and then monitor the performance of individual students, wherever the activities are completed. The bank of self-correcting activities and video resources will be updated regularly, making Espace Virtuel into an endlessly evolving service, capable of responding to new demands, trends and developments. In September, it will also be made available on computer, tablet and smartphone, ensuring that it is accessible wherever and whenever there is an opportunity to learn.

Emilio Marill, EMDL’s Head of Digital Publishing commented: “The Internet and ICT can all too easily become a source of stress and extra work for teachers, rather than a help. Espace Virtuel provides teachers with a one-stop tool, allowing them to extend the walls of the classroom while offering a versatile, turnkey solution for use in class. It represents a change of mentality: we no longer wish to offer a range of partitioned, disconnected products but instead, an integral service of assistance and support. We are delighted with all that Avallain’s technology and expertise has helped us to achieve.”

Ignatz Heinz, Managing Director of Avallain, said: “EMDL’s Espace Virtuel is a true success story, both as a responsive and dynamic learning environment, and as a partnership between firms of shared vision. We are certain that the quality and depth of Espace Virtuel, along with EMDL’s commitment to ongoing publishing and enhancement, will establish it as a unique and important addition to FLE education. Avallain will continue to play its part, providing Avallain Author for the preparation of premium content, and Avallain Unity to complement those resources with reliable and helpful educational tools.”

Éditions Maison des Langues is a leading publisher of language learning materials for high schools, colleges and adult learners. Supported by commercial partnerships with the renowned publishing houses Klett and Difusión, EMDL publishes courses and supporting materials for French, Italian, German and Spanish language learning.

Avallain’s co-founder, Ursula Suter, has been invited by The International Conference for E-Learning in the Workplace (ICELW) to present her vision for a revolution in the way educational resources are authored and delivered.

Speaking this week at Columbia University in New York, the Swiss educationalist and entrepreneur will outline how innovations in e-learning offer opportunities to enhance training for an increasingly dispersed and pressured workplace. Suter will explain how in the past, many attempts to deliver relevant and responsive online training have been frustrated by considerations of cost, time and complexity. She will then show how Avallain’s online authoring platform, Avallain Author, and its sister learning platform, Avallain Unity, allow institutions and training professionals to overcome these constraints.

In her conference session on June 17th, Suter will describe how Avallain Author allows training professionals to choose activity types and formats that best suit the material, and then, using the unique innovation of “Design Packs”, deliver them in a bespoke design and interface. Drawing examples from a range of Avallain projects, Suter will explain how a standards-based, modular architecture means that training may be delivered seamlessly to multiple devices and platforms. But she will argue that the flexibility need not end there. Suter will show how the Avallain Unity platform picks up where Avallain Author leaves off, providing a unique object-oriented approach to learning management, so that high quality, responsive content is delivered in an equally responsive environment.

To close her session, Suter will present experience and research drawn from Avallain’s a-ACADEMY, an e-learning programme for schools in Kenya endorsed by the Kenyan government. She will show a-ACADEMY’s substantive, measurable results, proving the real impact of properly devised and delivered e-learning.

“At Avallain, we believe that technology must never eclipse inspiring and effective educational design,” comments Suter, who has been working in the field of e-learning since 1997. “We wanted to develop tools that empower educators to devise, shape and deliver online learning to suit their changing needs, without the involvement of technologists. I welcome this opportunity to show how these tools are already delivering real outcomes in a variety of educational contexts.”

The ICELW is an international conference bringing together the corporate and academic worlds to realize the vast potential of e-learning in business and industry. This year’s conference will be held at Columbia University in New York, from June 15th-17th.

Speaking last week at the German Adult Education Conference in Berlin, Joachim Gauck, the German President, singled out the learning portal for immigrants developed on Avallain technology as a “particularly impressive” example of digital education for adults.

The President was referring to Ich Will Deutsch Lernen, an online learning environment produced for the German Adult Education Association (DVV). Released in 2013, the portal is designed to support and enhance integration courses for immigrants provided by community colleges. It offers extended self-study material, online tutoring, assistance with job applications, and general vocational help and advice.

The President’s speech comes at a time of seismic change in Germany’s adult education sector, driven by what Gauck described as a “digital transformation” and also by the largest number of immigrants in post war history – more than a million in the last year alone – all of whom must be integrated into German society. He used his speech to highlight the role of community colleges in providing education to all, in reflecting social change, and in engendering civic responsibility. In this context he pointed to the opportunity afforded by digital education to expand the boundaries of community colleges and offer more accessible, personal and motivational learning to all.

The President closed his address by pointing to the Ich Will Deutsch Lernen as an example of best practice in the field, recognizing its strengths as a powerful learning environment, and its wider civic importance.

Ursula Suter, Co-Founder of Avallain commented: “Since the project’s inception we have been acutely aware of its social and educational importance. Working with Avallain and our technology, the DVV has produced an environment that achieves the highest standards of educational design, and is truly responsive to the considerable need. We are delighted that these efforts have been recognized in this way, and that the President has highlighted the importance of continued investment and innovation in this field.”

The German Adult Education Association (DVV) promotes the training and education provided by adult education centers and represents the interests of more than 900 community colleges at federal, European and international level.

For more than a quarter of a century, Difusión has played a leading role in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. Now, its launch of Campus Difusión underscores its place at the vanguard of the industry. Prepared and delivered on groundbreaking Avallain technology, Campus Difusión brings a dynamic and responsive digital dimension to Difusión courses, to the benefit of students, teachers and institutions.

Centred around a wealth of instructional videos, highly interactive exercises, language-controlled news activities, and digital editions of textbooks, Campus Difusión offers students a unique environment in which to learn and collaborate, and teachers a platform upon which to enhance and extend their lessons and their classroom. Students may personalize their learning, see their progress and submit work for review, while teachers are able to guide the work of their class, and set and evaluate tasks. Difusión is making this offering available to the widest possible audience with its innovative ‘freemium’ charging model, which makes much of the content cost-free, and a premium service easy to sample and access.

Katia Coppola and Jaime Sala, CEOs of Difusión commented: “We are delighted to share Campus Difusión with students and teachers, confident that it is true to our core values of exceptional quality and innovation. Campus Difusión represents a step-change not only in the way teachers and students engage, learn and teach, but also in the way we as publishers aid those interactions with enhanced content and meaningful, pedagogically useful tools. It also marks a new era in our own digital workflows, in which we are now using Avallain’s platforms to publish even more quickly and responsively.” 

Ignatz Heinz, Managing Director of Avallain, said: “We are very proud of Campus Difusión, both as a demonstration of very effective collaboration, and as an exceptional product. With a development time of only months, Difusión and Avallain had to prepare all the content and solve technical challenges such as platform integrations and a transition from Moodle, and we achieved a startling result.  With content prepared in Avallain Author and delivered seamlessly to multiple devices on the Avallain Unity learning platform, Campus Difusión achieves an elegance of architecture and a simple but engaging user experience, consistent with the very highest standards of digital publishing.”

Education entrepreneur addresses benefits and risks of digital disruption in education at UNM-Congress in Zurich.

Digital disruption means change. It forces industries to break with old habits and redefine industry norms. But in the arena of education, digital disruption still does not seem to live up to its potential. Why is that? How can we change this? And how can we start to take advantage of the benefits of such drastic change while controlling its risks?

To consider these questions, the Zurich University of Teacher Education (PHZH) invited Ursula Suter to share her experiences as the opening keynote speaker at the 17th Teaching with New Media (UNM) Congress. The Swiss entrepreneur started pioneering technology-enhanced education as early as 1997 and co-founded Avallain in 2002, a Swiss company that has since evolved into an international key player in educational technology.

Technology Needs Both Control and Freedom to Innovate

Suter began her keynote by briefly introducing the key factors of digital disruption, defining the term, pointing out the opportunities and cautioning against possible risks. Directly linking theory to practice, she illustrated her comments with real-life examples such as Uber and its controversial impact on the taxi business

She outlined how digital disruption can and partly is already answering questions that have been occupying the education sector for many years. Emerging educational technologies can be helpful in maintaining student attention and in enhancing student-teacher interaction. To help technology unfold its power of innovation, the education sector needs to give itself the space to freely experiment while mediating risks stemming from hasty integration of new media.

The Flipped Classroom, a Successful Model

Suter introduced models that are already being implemented successfully, such as the “flipped classroom”. This pedagogical approach allows students to acquire theoretical concepts at their own pace assisted by technology, either at home in the ‘full flipped’ model or during classroom lessons in the ‘half flipped’ model. These models allow teachers to use class time for interactive classroom activities and group discussions and give students a chance to apply their knowledge in practice.

Suter illustrated how Avallain technology is used worldwide to facilitate such models, as in Oxford University Press’s Kerboodle, a digital learning platform for secondary schools used by more than 1 million teachers and students.

From Models to Real Life: Unlock Education For Africa

The entrepreneur ended her keynote by describing how Avallain is using its technology to drive charitable work in Africa. Her Kenya-based team has developed an educational platform for primary schools to bridge the gap between the availability of electronic devices and the lack of quality instructional materials. This gap is especially prominent in rural areas. Drawing from footage and testimony directly from Kenyan schools, Suter explained how the a-ACADEMY platform helps to address these challenges by building on recent instructional models in its new “Unlock Education For Africa” campaign.

The audience of 250 enthusiastically responded to Suter’s keynote in a lively question-and-answer session following the address.

“Ursula Suter’s thinking and action features a rarely holistic view on the usage of New Media. She and Avallain are effectively embedding technology in comprehensive pedagogical models in order to strengthen what matters the most: the interaction between students and their teachers. To me, Ursula Suter is one of the few digital learning specialists that consequently keep the focus on the human. As a logical result, her efforts are sustainably enhancing learning. I am very excited about the wonderful Unlock Education For Africa campaign and wish everybody involved the best of success.”

 – Priska Fuchs, Teacher and School Developer

 (Centre for Commercial Education Zug, Winner of the Swiss School Award 2015)