What’s New in Personalized Learning? AI Meets Branching Design

Personalized Learning: From Static to Smart

Personalized learning is the practice of designing learning experiences to match a learner’s existing knowledge with newly introduced information. This is the educational method behind the idea of “testing out” of some courses, or having prerequisites to ensure students have the foundational knowledge needed for advanced courses. At the classroom level, an instructor would theoretically determine where each student needs more or less help, then adjust the pace for each individual — a nearly impossible task in reality. However, students need this personalized support more than ever, considering that students have different learning experiences in high school, they may take extended breaks or return to college as an older (nontraditional) student, and some residual learning shortages remain from the quick conversion to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic for traditional-aged students. Fortunately, there has been no better time for technology-supported learning due to developments in generative AI, which makes supporting personalized learning manageable for most instructors.

In this article, we will look specifically at branching scenarios to create personalized learning paths and discuss a few available tools that make creating them faster and easier. These suggestions show ways to incorporate individual activities that are personalized to learners, showing that this style of design can be small or use the same principles for an entire course.

Tools You Can Use Now

You can start building a course with personalized learning design right now, using the native features in D2L Brightspace, or tools adopted and supported by the University of Arizona, such as H5P and Feedback Fruits, which are integrated in Brightspace. Each tool offers specific features that can help inform your design.

In D2L Brightspace:

• Release Conditions: Show or hide content based on student actions, such as quiz scores, assignment submissions, or completion of modules. For example, students who score below a certain threshold on a quiz can be directed to review material before moving forward.
• Intelligent Agents: Automatically send personalized messages when specific conditions are met, like inactivity or completion of a task. This keeps learners engaged and supports timely feedback.
• Customized Feedback in Quizzes: Use question-level feedback to offer tailored guidance depending on which answer a student selects, helping reinforce learning or correct errors in real time.

With H5P (available within Brightspace):

• Branching Scenario Content Type: Build interactive, decision-based learning activities where students navigate different paths based on their choices. This is ideal for case studies, ethics simulations, or situational judgment training.
• Course Presentation & Interactive Video: Combine multimedia with embedded questions and branching links to allow learners to explore topics at their own pace and depth.

With Feedback Fruits (available within Brightspace):

• Interactive Video or Document: Embed questions and prompts that allow learners to engage actively with content. You can scaffold the experience so students who answer incorrectly are directed to review parts again or see different content.
• Peer Review and Discussion Tools: Use these to create structured feedback loops that adapt based on student contributions, encouraging reflection and deeper understanding.
• Tip: Many of the tools in Feedback Fruits have optional student-facing AI assistance. The AI tool, Acai, works as a coach while students complete the activity, offering suggestions and reminders for specific information in the activity prompt.

How AI Fits In

In instructional design, generative AI is quickly becoming a design partner, helping to build the framework for personalized activities faster, which allows you more time to be creative (or have some help when you’re stuck). Here are some of the ways AI tools can help with your design:

• Brainstorming branching paths: Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and others can help you sketch out scenario ideas, identify decision points, and anticipate learner responses. For example, if you’re building a case study for a nursing course, you could ask AI to outline possible patient reactions based on different interventions.
• Drafting feedback language: Personalizing feedback for every branch can be time-consuming. AI can help by generating constructive feedback tied to specific choices, making the learning experience more dynamic without writing each response from scratch.
• Scaffolding reflection prompts: After a student finishes a branching path, use AI to generate reflection questions tailored to the skills or concepts addressed in that route. You can even provide your AI chat tool with your learning outcomes to have them connected to the reflection.

In all of these uses, the AI tool isn’t creating the activity or lesson for you, but it functions as a collaborator to reduce the time and cognitive load needed to develop more detailed and complex activities.

Try This: A Personalized Learning Activity

Choose any of the tools below, then input a prompt like the one shown into an AI assistant.

• D2L Brightspace Release Conditions: “Help me design a short quiz-based personalized learning path for an introductory psychology course using D2L Brightspace. Students who score 80% or higher move to the next module, while those below 80% are shown a remediation activity. Write clear learner-facing instructions and suggest content for both paths.”
• H5P Branching Scenario: “Help me write a short branching scenario for an environmental science course about responding to a wildfire. Include three decision points, each with two outcomes, and write clear student instructions for each.”

When you are comfortable with some of the available tools and using AI assistants in design, you can use more than one to create even more dynamic activities. The example prompt below uses Quizzes in Brightspace set with release conditions to direct students with different scores on the quiz to associated Feedback Fruits activities that align with the best learning for them. Release conditions make only the appropriate path for each student visible to them, which reduces confusion.

• Feedback Fruits: “Design a set of personalized learning activities using Feedback Fruits in a professional writing course. Based on a student’s score on a pre-assessment quiz, they should either complete an ‘Interactive Document’ reviewing tone and audience or skip ahead to a ‘Discussion Assignment’ on applying communication strategies. Write brief activity descriptions and student instructions for both paths.”

Ready to Try It?

Personalized learning can be designed in nearly any course, using the tools and features already available. Using tools like D2L Brightspace, H5P, and Feedback Fruits, you can start building personalized elements that respond to students’ needs, choices, and performance in your class. UCATT is here to help with everything from designing the activity, to using these and other tools, to helping you with AI prompts. Remember: start small and add more as you are comfortable!