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Differentiated Instruction in an Online College Classroom

Differentiated Instruction in an Online College Classroom

Differentiated Instruction: Providing students opportunities to learn content using different resources, employing varied strategies, and/or allowing students to demonstrate their learning in different ways based on their individual learning needs and interests. --Natalie Milman, Differentiating Instruction in Online Environments

Are we still thinking about differentiated instruction now that we're online? It's a core instructional principle that we all believe in, but in an overwhelming race to digital learning, it can easily be pushed to the side in a to-do-later-pile by even the very best and the brightest.

How can we make an online learning environment engaging for our students while maintaining the integrity of the academic content and without further complicating the process? Creating an engaging course is as easy as focusing on the 3 main principles: Course Clarity, Student Communication, and Timely Student Feedback. Backward design is the best way to create this type of engaging online learning environment.

Wiggins and McTighe, in their book Understanding by Design (2nd Ed., 2005), describe the three steps of backward design.

  1. Identify desired results. What should students know and be able to do at the end of the course? These are your learning outcomes.
  2. Determine acceptable evidence that students have achieved these learning outcomes. These are your formative and summative assessments.
  3. Plan learning experiences, instruction, and resources that will help students be able to provide evidence that they have met the learning outcomes.

Creating an engaging course is as easy as focusing on the 3 main principles: Course Clarity, Student Communication, and Timely Student Feedback.

By working with the end in mind, we ensure that we are creating a student-centered-course as opposed to a content-centered-course. When we know where we are going in our instruction, course clarity becomes the natural outcome that supports high levels of online student engagement. The more we can provide students with a variety of learning approaches the better chance we have of creating authentic engagement experiences as opposed to ritually engaged experiences. A learning module that addresses visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic learning modalities better meets the needs of diverse learners. Research suggests that activities requiring active participation like video quizzes, audio clips, educational simulations, and virtual breakout rooms increase online engagement five times greater than in a traditional narrative environment.

Quoting for emphasis: By working with the end in mind, we ensure that we are creating a student-centered-course as opposed to a content-centered-course.

Implementing formative assessment throughout your learning modules provides another form of engagement while allowing the student to take control of their learning outcomes. Student communication in this process is vital to the effectiveness and success of online courses. This process creates the online community and is enhanced by timely feedback in both asynchronous and synchronous courses. Formative assessments used in this way become a process for creating evidence for learning throughout the course. Student/Instructor posts recorded audio or video feedback for asynchronous courses or peer evaluation in synchronous courses are methods of communication that fill multiple needs for the learner. Implementing this best practice along with backward design provides opportunities for healthy relationships to form and engaging learning to occur in a virtual learning environment.

Additional Resources

Contributing Author

Tracy Lampley

Dr. Tracy Lampley received her MA and ED in Leadership from Trevecca University. Dr. Lampley has worked as an Adjunct for Tennessee Technological University as an Instructor and Course Developer for 13 years. Prior to joining higher education, Dr. Lampley engaged in action research as a K-8 Administrator and Data Analyst for Williamson County Schools. She joined the Department of Distributed Education in January as an Instructional Designer for Vol State.
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