How to Bring Learning Alive For Diverse Learners

Students today need multiple avenues that will make learning exciting. To embrace the learning culture of today's student educators need to have an effective curriculum and instructional design approaches that will meet the needs of diverse learners.

Educators can bring learning alive with the following approaches: Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and ADDIE.

WAC

To motivate students who are opposed to writing, introduce short writing prompts so that students can start on their reading level.

This same strategy is presented as a Writing-to-Learn (WTL) strategy. WTL activities are quick, impromptu, or informal writing tasks that help students think through and discover critical concepts or ideas presented in a course (Saulnier, 2016).

Students can also be placed in paired writing groups, so they have the opportunity to share their writing ideas. Projects can be completed in pairs so that students can grow and learn from one another. Strive to think outside the box in terms of the activities that students complete.

Instead of students completing fill in the black worksheets with vocabulary for a content area, they can do collaborative work and projects that encourage writing and dialogue (Saulnier, 2016).

Students who engage in WAC also have higher learning outcomes than students in a traditional classroom where WAC has not been included in the lesson (Van Alten, Phielix, Janssen, & Kester, 2019).

Always try to balance the standards with engagement and fun. When there is an equal balance, the lesson incorporated with WAC should have positive effects.

ADDIE

Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate a lesson plan to ensure it will effective.

1. Analyze: You clarify the problem to be addressed with an instructional intervention. Define the training needs, and conduct an analysis of the audience to determine the instructional environment, pre-existing knowledge, skills, abilities, opportunities, and constraints.

2. Design: You can write learning objectives and determine the instructional strategies that will be utilized to achieve the outlined objectives. Decisions are made about how the instructional materials will look, feel, operate, and be delivered to the learner.

3. Develop: The content presented should be assembled and incorporated into the design to produce the instructional or performance support materials.

4. Implement: The finished lesson is rolled out to the intended classroom or audience and the impact should be monitored.

5. Evaluate: Use various methods to determine whether the lesson is delivering the expected results.

The WAC strategy will push the learning experiences of students. WAC will allow students to become more comfortable with writing and collaborating with other students about their thoughts.

Educators have the responsibility of shifting away from the norm to reach the diverse students present in the classroom. Writing is an engaging experience.

References:

Saulnier, B. (2016). The application of writing across the curriculum (WAC) techniques in a

systems analysis & design flipped classroom. Information Systems Education Journal,

14(4), 13-19.

Van Alten, D. C. D., Phielix, C., Janssen, J., & Kester, L. (2019). Effects of flipping the classroom on learning outcomes and satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Educational Research

Review, 28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2019.05.003