Introduction
One of the few things that practically everyone agrees on in both education and training is that people learn at different rates and have different learning needs. Yet our schools and training programs typically teach a predetermined, fixed amount of content in a set amount of time. Inevitably, slower learners are forced to move on before they have mastered the content, and they accumulate deficits in their learning that make it more difficult for them to learn related content in the future. Also, faster learners are bored to frustration and waste much valuable time waiting for the group to move on – a considerable squander of talent that our communities, companies, and society sorely need. A system that was truly designed to maximize learning would not force learners to move on before they had learned the current material, and it would not force faster learners to wait for the rest of the class.