Differentiated Learning: Stretching the most able students

What is differentiated learning?

Differentiated learning may be defined as 'using a variety of instructional strategies that address diverse student learning needs'. The Centre's work has focused on stretching more able students as it was felt this aspect had been under researched in higher education, and therefore, a good defintiion for our work is 'the provision of different learning opportunities with the intention of achieving different learning outcomes in the most able students'.

The provision of opportunities for talented and gifted pupils in schools has been a priority for a number of years, and a number of organisations and projects exist to support and stretch the more able students within school, for example:

• The Gifted and Talented programme
• APECS – Able Pupils Experiencing Challenging Science
• Society of Biology British Biology Olympiad and Biology Challenge

Opportunities to stretch more able students within higher education may focus on extra curricular activities, such as;

• Summer schools such as those run by the Gatsby Foundation and the University of Cambridge
• Opportunities with learned societies funding for short research projects, grants to attend conferences.
• Undergraduate research projects offered by a number of institutions across the UK they give students interested in research the opportunity to run a short research project, such as the UROP scheme at the University of Reading, the URSS scheme at the University of Warwick, and the UROP programme at ICL.
• Opportunities for students to publish their research in institutional journals such as Biolog-e at the University of Leeds, or BURN at the University of Nottingham, or UK wide Undergraduate research journals, such as Bioscience Horizons.
• Differentiated learning could also involve giving students a choice in how they learn, for example personalised learning, or self directed learning.

Articles in the Bulletin on Student Needs (Ian Hughes) and Differentiating in the HE classroom – no easy answers? (Julian Park) aimed to raise awareness of some of the issues surrounding differentiated learning in higher education. The Centre hopes to raise awareness of differentiated learning within the bioscience community and look at the different ways in which differentiated learning could be implemented and supported.

Differentiated learning resources from the Centre:

Short Guide: Differentiated Learning – Stretching able students, brings together ideas for activities that could be used to stretch more able students List of summer vacation placements and funding opportunities available to UK bioscience students Conference bursaries and travel grants for students offered by Learned Societies Student competitions and awards open to UK bioscience students Differentiated Learning resource list

Differentiated Learning Events

The Centre held a Differentiated Learning Forum in June 2007 to discuss differentiated learning in the biosciences, hear about ongoing work on stretching able students and report on how differentiated learning could be progressed within the biosciences. The main outcome of the Forum is a report bringing together discussions from the day, short case studies of current practice in stretching able students and ideas on how differentiated learning could be progressed in the biosciences Download the Differentiated Learning Forum report (pdf format)

Following the Forum an event Differentiated Learning – Stretching Able Students was held in January 2009, this meeting further explored differentiated learning and stretching able students and highlighted more examples of practice in stretching more able students in higher education biosciences.

Related links and information

Biomaths and Numerical Literacy

The Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research supports student summer vacation placements