The biggest education technology trend of 2012 has been the rise of the massively open online course or MOOC. Particularly at university-level, initiatives like Udacity, Coursera and EdX show signs of proving truly disruptive. Sebastian Thrun the founder of Udacity can now claim that in one year more people took his online course on artificial intelligence than the total number of students studying the subject around the world elsewhere. However the MOOC is still very much a broadcast medium - instructional videos, that beyond their on-demand nature, it could be argued, do little more than the Open University has been doing for over 40 years.­­­­­­­­­

Technology is now moving digital education beyond broadcast to personalised learning. Studies show that learning based on a one-to-one relationship between teacher and learner is particularly effective. In this situation the teacher can adapt the speed and content of their lessons to meet the learner's needs. This personalised approach to learning is a world away from the one-to-many approach of MOOCs. It's this one-to-one relationship that in 2013 adaptive learning technologies will aim to emulate.

Adaptive learning technologies use student data to adapt the way information is delivered to a student on an individual level. This data can range from online test scores to session time (how long users spend on a single exercise) to records of where a user has clicked or touched while figuring out a problem. Based on this feedback, the programme will understand which content to point the user at next - planning a personalised learning journey.

Kahn Academy is already experimenting with adaptive learning, drawing on its analytics service to suggest personalised video selections. Pearson has invested heavily in Knewton, a company that aims to create a 'learning map' of its educational content at a very granular level. In the UK Beluga is gearing up to launch a major new maths application that mixes adaptive learning with constructivist principles (learning through making and building) and Cog Booksis already applying its adaptive learning system to adult education.

For some time now computer games have adapted their content to the skill of their players - the better you are at Call of Duty, the sharper your enemies shoot. However, the player never sees the joins; they never feel judged or found wanting by the game. I'm looking forward to seeing these principles applied to educational content, so that whatever their ability, the learner feels challenged by what they're studying, but not stretched beyond their abilities.