Differentiation
From The Learning Engineer's Knowledgebase
Differentiation is when a teacher or facilitator provides different instruction and teaching actions to learners based on their individual needs or interests. Differentiation is similar to personalization, which is when a computing system allows for interfaces, activities, and content to be changed based on a learner's individual preferences or demonstrated skill or competency.
Definition
Differentiation is how teachers provide instruction in different ways to learners based on their unique needs. The unique needs of learners can include addressing their prior knowledge and experience with the content, their demonstrated mastery and competency with the subject under study, or their affect and attitudes toward the learning experience (e.g., self-efficacy, interest).
Additional Information
A teacher or facilitator benefits from using formative evaluation to determine the unique needs of the learners throughout the learning experience. Teachers also actively monitor for changes in learner participation or affect as indicators of whether the learner could use additional help through scaffolding or a differentiated instructional approach.
Approaches for differentiation:
- Providing different forms of informational content (e.g., text, video, audio, interactive, game)
- Providing scaffolding and supports to help with tasks, and removing scaffolds when learners have mastery
- Providing additional content and activities to help learners who need remedial support
- Providing choice in activities (e.g., either completing a project or solving a scenario)
- Adapting activities, tasks, and expectations based on learner's abilities, or by providing/prompting different micro-tasks to get to the same goal
- Changing, constraining, or altering the learning environment to suit learners' needs (including in-person learning environments)
- Conducting regular formative assessment, monitoring, and noticing of students' needs
- Requiring different deliverables for projects based on learners' strengths and interests (e.g., requiring either a written report or a video - learner's choice)
Approaches for formative evaluation to support differentiation:
- Monitoring learners' level of participation with activities
- Requesting mini quizzes and comprehension checks periodically on content knowledge and skills
- Surveying learners on their affective states: interest, motivation, emotions, perceptions, self-efficacy
- Observing learners as they use technology tools and work on projects to identify their needs
- Poll learners about questions that they have or things they are being challenged with (ask them directly, or anonymously)
Tips and Tricks
- Differentiation is a task that is largely the responsibility of an instructor or facilitator, although it can also be done by computing systems and digital learning environments. If an instructor is a part of your educational product, consider what variations you might include in the instructor's roles and activities so that they might differentiate based on learners' individual needs and prior knowledge.
- Designing differentiation strategies depends on knowing that differentiation is necessary in the first place, so a good place to start is to anticipate what kinds of needs, differences in prior knowledge and experience, and interests the audience may have. These differences can help you think about what kinds of differentiation strategies instructors or the digital learning environment can provide.
- Think about the ways that a teacher or the technologies that you use can monitor learners' needs and interests as they participate with your product. Consider how might the participants' needs be identified and how their level of participation with the activities be interpreted to indicate they could use some help or differentiation.
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