What most IELTS review programs offer is the generalist, hit-or-miss approach in preparing for the IELTS. While this offers some ease in terms of materials and content preparation and delivery, there is little to almost zero regard in targeting what an individual candidate needs for remedial or mastery. This brought NextKey to come up with and develop an approach, method, and system that addresses the need for a more targeted solution for every IELTS candidate.
The “Adaptive Scaffolding” is the blending and synergy of two well-known and well-used education theories: Adaptive teaching and learning and Scaffolding.
“Adaptive learning — or adaptive teaching — is the delivery of custom learning experiences that addresses the unique needs of an individual through just-in-time feedback, pathways, and resources (rather than providing a one-size-fits-all learning experience).” It employs Differentiated Pathways: Offer varying sequences of content to each student/candidate, e.g. provide extra help to a student for a particular concept before continuing to the next topic, fast-track advanced learners, or allow learners to decide what they’ll learn next.
Scaffolding, on the other hand, is the “term given to the provision of appropriate assistance to students in order that they may achieve what alone would have been too difficult for them.” Jerome Bruner (1960) and Lev Vygotsky (1978), through his “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD), both vastly contributed to the principles of scaffolding.
“Adaptive Scaffolding,” therefore, is adjusting, adapting, organizing, sequencing, customizing, and differentiating the scaffolds in the form of micro skills and content for a particular learner in order to respond to his/her unique and specific skill or content deficiencies or mastery needs. It’s what a “hit-or-miss” approach exactly is not. Adaptive Scaffolding aims for efficiency and effectiveness in learning and teaching.
Its application to NextKey’s IELTS Preparation Solution is in the utilization of the pre-assessment as an important phase in the analysis of a candidate’s preparedness level, competency deficiencies, and mastery of macro and micro skills. This will form the basis of the scaffolds to be designed/organized by the system-trained review coaches. The review coaches are Instructional Designers who understand Adaptive Scaffolding and its applications to the IELTS review program.
What separates NextKey’s IELTS review program from existing ones is the attention to the unique needs of each candidate. As the program is delivered fully online, it also promotes digital citizenship and technology adaptability among learners or candidates. IELTS are only currently being offered as a computer-based test as compared to having the option of paper-based tests before (pre COVID-19). The fully online nature and the use of a digital platform of NextKey’s IELTS preparation solution support the computer skills requirement of the actual IELTS test. NextKey uses simulated pre and post tests so that candidates are equipped with the computer skills needed to be successful at taking the computer-delivered IELTS test.
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