About the Ohio Personalized Learning Network

The Ohio Personalized Learning Network brings together educators that are committed to preparing each child for future success through the implementation and expansion of personalized learning practices. 

With support from Ohio Educational Service Centers, regional personalized learning specialists and KnowledgeWorks, the Ohio Personalized Learning Network connects educators, schools and districts to a continuum of grant-funded professional learning supports focused on helping local communities expand systems and approaches that center the individual needs of every learner.


Ohio’s Draft Personalized Learning Framework consists of 5 components each with 5 indicators with the learner at the center. The beliefs reflect optimally desired conditions for teaching and learning that support learners in achieving their goals in the ways that work best for them. Each component is amplified by indicators that define goals and outcomes to create a common understanding and vision for supporting a learner-driven personalized learning environment.

The Ohio Personalized Learning Network

Multiple Ways to Engage and Accelerate Your Learner-Centered Vision

  • Benefit from personalized coaching and support from national experts and Personalized Learning Specialists

  • Learn and share alongside other schools and educators that are working to grow personalized, student-centered learning

  • Gain access to on-demand modules to help educators build foundational knowledge at their own pace

  • Take advantage of grant-funded resources provided by Future Forward Ohio

How Ohio Defines Personalized Learning (Draft)

Personalized Learning is a learner-driven approach to teaching and learning that supports learners in achieving their goals in the ways that work best for them. In order to ensure that each learner is able to overcome obstacles to learning and be prepared for future success, it calls on educators to:

  • Really know and empower their learners;
  • Facilitate and co-design learning experiences with their learners;
  • Align supports to accelerate learning and meet individual learners’ distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations or cultural backgrounds; and
  • Provide ways for learners to demonstrate what they know and know how to do.

Why is Ohio Investing in Personalized Learning?

This moment presents a historic opportunity for Ohio to build upon and accelerate efforts to scale and spread personalized learning over the last decade. Ohio has continued to focus on personalized learning, from the 2014-2018 Competency-Based Education Pilot, to the 2018 Ohio strategic plan for education, to a 2019 state-level policy scan and community action planning. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated urgency and readiness for transformation to authentic personalized learning systems, exposing unique systemic challenges that create barriers for students, families, and educators on top of those that were well known before the pandemic.

A flexible and relationship-based approach to personalized learning can help educators address instructional and learning disruptions posed by the pandemic, while putting in place equitable, resilient systems that can ensure the future success of every child. 

Personalized learning centers each students’ strengths, needs and interests and provides personalized supports and ways to demonstrate what they know and know how to do. Students are engaged in partnership with their teachers; they know what they’re learning and why, they move forward when they’re ready, and they get help when they need it.

The systems-level focus on the learner’s experience and readiness ensures each learner feels connected to authentic, flexible opportunities to acquire the skills, knowledge, and dispositions they need in an inclusive, collaborative environment. 


Professional Learning Pathways

The Ohio Personalized Learning Network offers three primary pathways for joining the network, EXPLORE, LAUNCH, and TRANSFORM. All services are grant-funded through Future Forward Ohio.

EXPLORE

Personalized Learning

On-demand resources for educators interested in learning at their own pace, plus regular opportunities to learn from peers also exploring personalized learning
Child holding a magnifying glass

LAUNCH

Personalized Learning

Two-year cohort for school and district teams ready to re-energize your vision for learning and implement transformational personalized learning practices
Child running holding a kite

TRANSFORM

Systems

Five-year cohort for districts ready to transform to a more equitable system of teaching and learning by implementing a district-wide system of personalized learning
Teacher with two students