Effective and personalized content delivery through the Butterfly Model

Content delivered in the wiki model has its own limitations. One being, learners with different learning styles have difficulty going through material that is not suited to their preferred learning style (audio, text, video etc.). This problem is particularly compounded when we have teachers who are not experts and cannot guide the students well. Another limitation is that it is difficult for a novice to navigate. Also normally the expectation from a good teacher is the ability to provide examples and walk through an interactive process of learning. Then again, we have the need to cater to students with differing abilities in learning based on their own background and interest. Thus content should be suitable to cater to learners who may be at a novice, intermediate or advanced level. We also need to have content that can be developed to cater to the learning levels of students in both urban and rural settings in India. Having worked with over 60 engineering colleges and having trained over 320 faculty members, we found that there is a serious need for one model that can address all these limitations. This has led to content development in the “Butterfly Model” with the “Learning by Doing” methodology at its foundation. This paper discusses in detail our studies and feedback received for four courses developed in this model. This model we feel will be applicable to a wide range of learners and also help in enhancing the quality of learning of the students.