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Chris Werling, a director in the Learning & Development organization at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), began his journey in adaptive learning to try and understand what this new technology was all about. What he discovered is that the learner benefits from personalization. With the help of personalization, the user can fast-track through certain content based on their experience, as it enables them to use their time in a more beneficial way.

Today, colleges and universities, like Arizona State University and Oregon State, are pushing adaptive learning because they want to be at the forefront of this technology. So, how can your organization leverage it for your learners? Werling revealed that at PwC, adaptive learning is very project based and is not the answer for everything. However, this type of technology does a nice job of getting everyone to the same spot while taking different paths to get there. The goal is to get people to a baseline skill-level, while having different experiences coming into it. According to Werling, this has been the magic equation for PwC.

Dan Mackey, who is the head of customer success and products at McGraw-Hill, shared the stage with Werling, described the adaptive learning technology as e-learning that is tailored to the audience. If they don’t get something right, the program will recirculate them to eventually complete their objectives. Furthermore, this kind of learning improves efficiency and engagements among participants.

In terms of lessons learned, Werling said planning differently was the biggest piece that hit home with the firm. He went on to say that when your objective is to hit mastery level, you must be very specific in the design of the program. So, PwC put together specific objectives and questions and provided resources that would help the learner better understand why they got something right or have a better understanding about what they were seeing.

During Mackey’s presentation, he explained that adaptive learning is optimizing each learner’s experience in real-time, in order to be as efficient and effective as possible. Personalization is a huge component, as is mastery, awareness and confidence. Adaptive learning is a useful tool because it accounts for all backgrounds taking the course.

The mastery in adaptive learning comes from getting learners the help they need, when they need it, says Mackey. To summarize his presentation, Mackey said there are five areas of benefits of adaptive learning: the initial measurement (a learner’s initial level of knowledge about a particular topic), mastery, efficiency, engagement and agility.