The last topic covered by Professors Cope and Kalantzis in the MOOC e-Learning Ecologies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age is the topic of Differentiated Learning.

Reviewing some literature, I found a definition of this topic as:

"Differentiated instruction and assessment (also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation) is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing different students with different avenues to learning (often in the same classroom) in terms of acquiring content; processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability”

As an example, a heavy load of theory regarding Political Marketing for College Students in Political Sciences and Law School is transformed in a challenging game of Political Campaign for the Non-existent Community of Politikburgo, whose inhabitants have the same demands and needs as the actual residents where is located the University.

The inhabitants (demonym Politikburgueses) actually exist into a Facebook Community Group (with 5,323 members) where indeed interact with their political parties and candidates, get exposed to their marketing and social media campaigns, attend two debates physically or virtually via broadcast and effectively have an election process with an online ballot.

Differentiation is the best way that the students get really "hooked" into a course, as an example I will review my own experience with a College Course in the School of Law, in the subject of Political Marketing that I have the chance to polish along some semesters. For practical terms some issues need to be addressed to best achieve this:

Pre-assessment

For me, a key issue is to determine (Via an assessment) the entry knowledge that have the students have about the topic to learn and what methods they most commonly use to tackle this.

On-going assessment

The course is viewed as a project where a Political Campaign is set in Place. Some partial assessments are followed in order to prevent deviations along the campaign.

Content

The course is very rich in multimedia resources allocated in a Moodle Course, some of them (the basic one) is reviewed in class. The other material must be reviewed by them out of the regular class schedule to properly address the unique design of the campaign that each student's teams choose as their own political strategy.

Understand by Design

The small differences for each Student's Project are correlated with the unique design that the students imprint in their Political Campaign (i.e. not only a consequence of the political philosophy they choose but also by the tone and charisma provided by the candidate and the rest of roles played along the political campaign.

Process

The course is managed as mentioned above as a Project. The Trello Platform is used to follow up all tasks and goals of the entire group (as Teams a/o Political Parties) and individuals

Product

The Course far beyond the theory reviewed is a whole vivid experience by itself where emotions and passions arouse at the heat of the Political Campaign. The Polls, Debates and Final Election gave a sense of reality to the whole concept. Since each Party offers a unique Candidate and Value Proposition each Team have the chance to enhance their campaign with the use of Marketing.

Learning Environment

With the use of the Internet and Social Media, the group create a fictional Party in a Fictional Community but with real Community Problems alike any real Society. This helps to give the Course and the Project a real sense of reality.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiated_instruction

https://padlet.com/philobulus/irolh2x9g5cp

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AmwBiBt0kjTJ4l2dgeRPzm8xd7HO

http://www.azquotes.com/quote/365116

http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-praxis/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuDLw1zIc94

http://www.bie.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning-by-doing

Community of Politikburgo (Facebook Group)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/politikburgo/?ref=br_tf

Note: To access the Community Group on Facebook, first search in Groups: Comunidad de Politikburgo, once there, ask to be added as a member (I´m the Admin)

Campaigns and Debates from Politikburgo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3GRy5Gf2AA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxA85cwQ5cU&t=46s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZCui1ND760