Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This is an odd list. It's useful to debunk the buzzwords, but this item seems to endorse some questionable ones. Let's go through the list:

  • personalized learning - is nearing Gartner's peak of inflated expectations - yes, that seems right. But not simply among the "chattering classes" (whatever that means; I think it's a dog whistle saying "hey, I'm a Tory, listen to me")
  • competency-based Learning - is placed on the slope of enlightenment, which definitely feels wrong. No, I wouldn't conflate it with personalized learning (a straw man, if I ever saw one), but with the whole competency infrastructure still in development, I'd say it's still approaching inflated expectations
  • blended learning - moving toward the slope of enlightenment. Sure, but what an odd selection. Personalized and competency-based refer to pedagogy or learning design, while blended refers to choice of technologies.
  • project-pased learning - slope of enlightenment. I did a lot of project-based learning when I was a high school student in the 1970s. So if it's not yet on the slope of enlightenment, it's in trouble.

No, this article doesn't make things clearer at all.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Aug 28, 2025 8:48 p.m.

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