Workshop Facilitator
Rouxelle de Villiers

Title:

The Differentiated Classroom

Inter-active and self-directed studies for post-graduate and executive students.

Why is it important? 

All students are unique and learn to absorb and retain information in different ways. They require quite different stimuli to enthuse and motivate them to learn. These stimuli might vary from the subtle (body language, orderliness and culture in the classroom) to the obvious (group work, physical environment and lecturers’ teaching habits).  Students respond to subtle and obvious influencers either positively or negatively. Their responses are based on alignment of classroom values, culture and learning styles with their own preferred styles. Other factors that have a major influence on differentiating activities in the classroom are:  the level of maturation (not chronological age), experience, interest and competence in the discipline area. This is obviously of particular importance to more mature or more experienced students, especially if they pay relatively large fees for the course they attend or travel far, taking time out of their busy work-lives to attend the course.  What do we gain if we get this right? We give students reasons to invest in and be part of the process of learning.  In doing so we achieve higher retention levels, higher class attendance, higher levels of satisfaction … leading to increased levels of positive word-of-mouth and more profitable courses.

How the session will be run

This will be a facilitator led workshop, where key concepts will be introduced and then applied to the disciplines, fields and key foci represented by the attendees. The discussion will be supported by worksheets and group discussions. Participants will:

·       Work through the pneumonic PEMICCA in a step-by-step process to review key considerations and key requirements of a differentiated classroom:

P = Physical Comfort;
E = Emotional Comfort;
M = Mission;
I = Inter-dependency & Identity;
C = Confidence in facilitator/leader;
C = Control over learning process and pace;
A = Input into the Assessments.