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In the article, a group of faculty members creates a program for a four-year, research-
based university. During this experiment, they observed five different members who took part in
the program. In the course, there are two types of studios, which are, the “learning” and
“experience” studios. All students who took part in this research all had different skill sets and
backgrounds. For example, Zixi Li “is a doctoral student of the Instructional Systems
Technology Department, Indiana University, Bloomington,” Xlaoqlan Nlu “studied user research
in the master’s program at the School of Information, University of Michigan,” Botao Lu
“graduated from the University of Michigan, and currently works as UX Designer at MathWorks
with a background in Journalism and Information Science,” and Vincent Qiu “is a design,
technology, and innovation consultant working in digital transformation and futurist strategy”
(Gray et al., 2019). All of these people took part in the experiment. The reason for this research
was to prove the benefits of differentiated instruction.
The purpose of the learning and experience studios in this research was to provide
differentiated instruction and to integrate the real-world into learning. This not only helps
students be successful learners, but also helps better prepare them for the workforce. These are
both attributes of a quality curriculum. According to Sousa & Tomlinson, “A quality curriculum
is also highly relevant to students and enlists their motivation to learn. Finally, a quality
curriculum engages students in the discipline in authentic ways that approximate the ways
experts in the discipline work” (2018). The research conducted in this article proves this.
The study also showed that in order for a curriculum or program to be successful,
students must be able to receive formative feedback. In other words, a student does not simply
need to hear if their work was right or wrong, they need to know why their work was good or
bad, and they need to be told how they can improve in the future. The article states that “our
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students would receive formative feedback that enabled their progression towards mastery in
each area” (Gray et al., 2019). With a combination of quality curriculum, differentiation, and
formative feedback, this program was successful.
The information found in the article can be helpful for teachers. Reading the article will
help them understand the importance and effectiveness of quality curriculum and differentiated
instruction in the classroom. Teachers could take the ideas the researchers had in the article and
integrate them into their classroom. For example, a math teacher could teach students the
curriculum from the textbook, and then supplement the instruction with real life examples and
hands on manipulatives. Just as the two studios in the article helped students learn the material in
different ways and then experience it in real life scenarios, doing this in a math class can help
students learn the material and then connect what they learned to their everyday life.
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References
Li, Z., Niu, X., Lu, B., Qiu, V., & Huang, Y.-C. (2023). From UX to Instructional Design:
Supporting Rural Teachers in Transforming Students’ Reading Interests into Academic
Success. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 14(2), 58–71.
https://doi.org/10.14434/ijdl.v14i2.34837.
Sousa, D. A., & Tomlinson, C. A. (2018). Differentiation and the Brain (2nd ed.). Solution Tree
Press. https://libertyonline.vitalsource.com/books/9781945349539.
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