Sunday, March 2, 2014

Differentiation and Learning Styles

Using the survey results now consider your current blended/online course. What do you do to support different learning styles in a blended/online course?

I administered the suggested edutopia survey to my students. The image below shows one student's results, which are framed by the 8 intelligences put forward by Howard Gardner. The full results for the entire class can be seen here.


While most of my students' activities take place in the classroom, I am experimenting with many blended tools that allow them to access support materials at their own pace and to make individual decisions about how best to use their class time. 

Generally, I try to provide students with models to guide assignments, written instructions, and screencast demos. Together, we compile a range of multi-media texts that support our shared inquiry.

These survey results provide me with insight about my students, but I would not say that I plan differently for them based on my findings. When I discuss data like this with students, I frame it as one tool they can use to help them understand themselves and their individual learning processes. My goal is to build their metacognitive, self-regulatory, and self-advocacy skills. We talk about how a single survey is not definitive. The scores are not as important as how they interpret them and choose to use them. To help them make sense of surveys like these, I ask them to reflect in small groups: 
  • What did you think as you looked at your results? 
  • Were you surprised in any way? 
  • To what extent are your responses or preferences influenced by your surroundings or your prior experiences?

I don't want them to shy away from certain activities. I do want them to be aware of how their current strengths and preferences might shape their perceptions and influence their learning. I hope they will make informed decisions about how to approach learning tasks. I ask them to monitor their engagement and make choices that will build their motivation. With many of their projects, their first job is to choose a topic which they are excited to read about. As much as possible, I give them options for how to demonstrate their analysis and present their conclusions for my evaluation.


Describe and explain how with two of the below you support differentiated learning in your online/blended course?

Activities and Tasks

While I do not design different activities for different learning styles, I do try to provide students with multiple entry points into any learning experience. No matter what their styles, strengths, preferences, or intelligences... I want them to be able to make maximal use of their background knowledge and interests. I almost never ask questions or pose problems with a limited number of "correct" answers.

For reasons I will explain in more depth in the screencast, below, I tend to talk about "individualizing" instruction in my classroom rather than "differentiating". I started my teaching career in special education. I am always wary that attempts to classify students into a limited number of categories will lead to differentiated expectations.  As a literacy teacher, my primary responsibility is to cultivate critical reading, writing, and discussion skills. 

Class activities ask students to make their thinking transparent to an audience. It is not always easy for adolescents to organize and express their most complex thinking in writing, so we develop and "rehearse" our thinking in class discussions, in impromptu screencasts, and through critical examination of a range of multimedia texts. I want students' initial texts (whether a sentence, and outline, or a quick video) to be quick. These are rapid prototypes that allow for multiple subsequent iterations. If students invest too much time and effort in producing a first written draft, I find they are resistant to feedback and often don't want to revise their thinking in a substantial way.

Assignments and Assessments

Observers of my classroom or viewers of my blended assignments might notice that all students are guided through the same stages toward completion of the same assessment. However, those looking for differentiated methods are often happy with what they see. 

When educators talk about differentiated learning, they are often referring to differentiated means of presentation (targeting students' various receptive skills). I will follow-up with individuals and offer a supplementary explanation and personalized support, but my initial presentation is meant to be more of a one-size-fits-all affair. Once students have a vision of the target, they are able to decide on a preferred learning path and to choose how best to communicate/demonstrate their learning. Although I present the same instructions to everyone, students create products that are highly personalized. In this way, it is the students' productive/expressive actions which are differentiated more than my presentation.

Student choice is my most powerful teaching tool. If my students can capitalize on their interests and background knowledge while making choices about how to respond to academic challenges, they are more likely to be deeply engaged, to challenge their own thinking, and to sustain their effort in the creation of products that make them proud. An engaged learner is looking to make meaning and to integrate it with existing schema.















9 comments:

  1. I admire the simplicity of your presentation. I like the link you added to see the rest of the survey (I would like to know how you did that if you have the time).
    I am taking this part of your thought with me 'If students invest too much time and effort in producing a first written draft, I find they are resistant to feedback and often don't want to revise their thinking in a substantial way' because this is going to solve a problem in my class. Though I felt that if they all typed out their writing, it will be easier to make adjustments with feedback but some students are reluctant though they still try. Now, I can make them do more of a quick thought and gradually build it and add on feedback.

    I agree with you on the students choice as a powerful tool as this is happening more in my class now... thanks to this course. At my class meeting last Friday, I got loads of feedback from my students on how they have loved the past three weeks more because they get to choose what they want to do.

    Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Abimbola-My complete survey results are presented in Keynote slides. Each student took a screenshot of their results after taking the survey. Then I saved the Keynote slides as a PDF and uploaded the PDF to Google Drive. In Drive, I set the sharing so "anyone with the link" can view.
      Thanks so much for your feedback.

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  2. Hi Jason,I completely agree and really liked when you said, “students choice is my most powerful teaching tool”. When we are talking about differentiation, it is crucial to keep in our minds that we need to teach our students the same content, and that they should follow the same process to complete an assignment and/or assessment. Through that, I want to say that if we teach students a subject “x” it is crucial to let students choose how to demonstrate their learning. That way they will be more engaged and will feel free to process their thinking in formats only relevant to them.

    Thanks for sharing.

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    2. Hi Leticia,
      It seems you are talking about 3 variables here:
      -Content of instruction
      -Learning process
      -Demonstration of understanding

      In my case, I do not often require that students access exactly the same content. As John is doing with our library of optional readings and videos, I can usually give students some choice about what they read.

      I do exercise most control over the process, although I want to allow them to move through a suggested sequence of activities at their own pace.

      The demonstration of understanding is often the place where the unique student voice is most evident.

      Thanks so much for your feedback.

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    3. Dear Jason ,
      we will be working together next week in the same group so I wanted to see your ideas about tecahing. In your differentiation task you mentioned about individualised lessons , In fact I agree with you because new generation is multi-tasker and whatever their learning style is they can learn by a well-planned class activities. In my survey about learning styles students learning abilities are nearly close to each other. However, I haven't been successful for using a well-designed plan to make my students individualized. I appreciated your task ,it is clear and effective .

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    4. Fulya,
      Thanks for your feedback on my differentiation task. I look forward to exploring some of these ideas and more in the coming week.

      Hopefully, as we look at assessments we are currently using, we can talk about how they might be implemented in a blended environment in a way that allows students to personalize their process and products.

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  3. The depth with which you covered the differentiate learning piece of our classroom is truly well done! The video was a great idea as an add on; thanks for the heads up on the video by psychologist Daniel Willingham. What resonated with me was that different learning style does not make meaning different. I think that is important to remember that their learning style does not always have to define how they learn. In regards to multiple intelligence, students dipping into the other pools of intelligence will only help to strengthen their overall understanding of a concept or allow them to develop a deeper understanding.

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    1. Marja,
      Thanks so much for your feedback on this differentiated learning post.

      I think I keep coming back to the strategy of using a supplementary video because I feel more confident that people can understand my ideas if I am talking and sharing images than when I'm just writing.

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