A systematic review of personalized learning in higher education: learning content structure, learning materials sequence, and learning readiness support

ABSTRACT

While most educators regard personalized learning as beneficial for higher education and continuous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of personalized learning, a comprehensive understanding of how personalized learning has been designed and implemented in higher education is scarce. The purpose of this review study is to examine the design elements of personalized learning, focusing on learning content structuring, learning materials sequencing, and learning readiness support. A total of 41 relevant articles were analyzed to review current design trends of personalized learning in higher education and identify gaps in the literature. The results revealed an increasing research interest but low maturity of personalized learning in higher education. Results also revealed that learning content structuring, learning materials sequencing, and learning readiness support were treated separately. Learning materials sequence and learning readiness support have not been considered together in many reviewed articles. Besides, a large number of reviewed articles could not be specified in the categories, indicating that the theoretical foundations of personalized learning were not advanced enough for a wide adoption.

KEYWORDS:

• Words: systemic review
• personalized learning
• higher education
• content structure
• materials sequence
• learning readiness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lin Zhong

Lin Zhong is an assistant professor of Workforce Education and Development program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her primary research interests include learning analytics, problem solving, self-regulated learning, and personalized learning