D187 Differentiated Instruction is catalog number EDUC 6302 and carries 3 competency units. It examines how the classroom environment and students' readiness, interests and learning profiles shape the way curriculum, instruction and assessment are differentiated. D187 and EDUC 6302 name one requirement. The course has a single hard rule buried in it that decides most scores: you differentiate the route, never the destination.
Same standard, different roads
The commonest misunderstanding in this subject is that differentiation means some students do less. It does not. The learning goal stays constant while the way students reach it varies, and a plan in which one group is working toward a lower standard has stopped differentiating and started tracking. Aspects in this course are written to catch that, and a deliverable that quietly lowers the target for a group will not pass however carefully it is presented.
The framework has two dimensions and both need to appear. On one side sit the things you can vary: content, meaning how students access the material; process, meaning the activities through which they make sense of it; product, meaning how they demonstrate learning; and the learning environment itself. On the other side sit the reasons to vary them: readiness, which is where a student currently stands with this specific skill; interest, which is what pulls attention; and learning profile, which covers how a student prefers and is able to work.
Readiness carries an important caution. It is task specific and it moves. A student who needs support with fraction operations may need extension in geometric reasoning three weeks later, and a differentiation plan that assigns a student to a permanent level has misread the concept entirely. Written well, readiness grouping is temporary, evidence-based and dissolved as soon as the evidence changes.
Everything here closes as Competent or Not Competent. There is no letter grade and no ordinary grade point average, and the 3 competency units describe the share of a six month flat rate term the course represents.
Turning aspects into a differentiated lesson plan
The scoring detail sits inside your Course of Study rather than the public catalog, so count the aspects on your rubric before you plan anything. Each is scored independently and each has to reach a 2 for the task to pass. Deliverables in this course tend to lose the rationale aspect rather than the planning aspect, because describing what you will do is easier than explaining why the data justified it.
The budget, worked. Assume six scored aspects and directions pointing near 2,400 words alongside the lesson materials. Reserve 180 words to describe the class and the learning goal and 140 to close, leaving 2,080 of scored body, or 346 each at a flat split. Weight it: 540 to the aspect covering the differentiated lesson set itself, 460 to the rationale aspect, and 270 to each of the remaining four. That totals 2,080.
Write the learning goal once, at the top, and copy it verbatim into every differentiated pathway you design. If it has to be reworded for one group to make sense, that group's pathway is aiming somewhere else.
A shape that shows differentiation working
Follow your directions where they prescribe a template. Where they leave the arrangement open, this order lets an evaluator see the reasoning and the plan side by side.
| Component | What it has to show | The scoring trap |
|---|---|---|
| Learning goal | One standard-aligned goal, identical for every student | Different goals dressed as differentiation |
| Preassessment | What you did to find out where students actually are | Grouping decided from impression rather than evidence |
| Learner profile summary | Readiness bands, interests and profile factors, in aggregate | Labels attached to named children |
| Differentiated content | How each group accesses the same material | Easier material rather than different access |
| Differentiated process | The activities each group works through | The same worksheet with fewer items |
| Differentiated product | The ways students may demonstrate the goal | Choices that do not all evidence the same standard |
| Shared assessment | How everyone's learning is judged against one criterion | Separate criteria that make groups incomparable |
| Rationale | Why each decision follows from the preassessment evidence | Description with no reasoning attached |
The shared assessment row is the structural test of the whole plan. If the three pathways cannot be judged against one criterion, then they were not three routes to one destination, and every earlier section inherits the problem.
Differentiation a real teacher could actually run
The second thing evaluators look for is feasibility. A plan with five simultaneous groups, each on a different activity, each needing the teacher at once, describes a lesson nobody has ever taught. Aspects asking about implementation are asking whether one adult could deliver this on a Tuesday.
Some practical constraints worth building in. Two or three pathways is usually the limit for a single lesson, and pathways should be designed so that at most one of them needs the teacher at a time. Anything the students cannot start without you becomes a bottleneck the moment two groups stall together. Materials have to exist in advance, since differentiation invented mid-lesson is improvisation. Transitions cost minutes, so a plan with six movements in a forty-five minute period has spent a quarter of the lesson on furniture.
There is also a difference between differentiating a lesson and differentiating a unit. Some variation is better placed across days than within one period: a menu of products chosen at the start of a week, a station rotation that runs over three sessions, a text set that different groups meet at different points. Saying which timescale your plan operates on is a small addition that makes a submission read as written by someone who has taught.
Finally, differentiation is not the same as accommodation or modification under a formal plan. Where a student has legally required supports, those are obligations rather than instructional choices, and a strong deliverable states that boundary clearly instead of folding the two together.
Evidence and sourcing in a differentiation deliverable
- Ground grouping in preassessment data you actually collected, described with counts rather than impressions.
- De-identify students completely. Readiness bands and profile factors can be reported in aggregate without any child becoming recognisable.
- Cite the differentiation literature for framework claims rather than a training handout, and cite learning research for anything you assert about how students learn.
- Avoid supporting a pathway with the claim that a student is a particular type of learner in a sensory sense, since that idea is not supported and a learning sciences reader will notice.
- Follow the citation style your directions name and cite inside tables as well as in prose.
What separates Competent from a return
Aspects score independently, so returns here are specific and usually preventable. The three that recur are pathways aiming at different goals, grouping with no evidence behind it, and a rationale section that narrates the plan again.
- The learning goal is identical across every pathway, word for word.
- Every grouping decision points at a preassessment result.
- The rationale explains why, not what, and refers to the evidence by name.
- All pathways are judged against one assessment criterion.
- The plan is deliverable by one teacher with the materials described.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs calendar rather than standing. In a six month flat rate term calendar is the constraint that decides how many courses close, and copying the goal verbatim into every pathway is the cheapest safeguard in the course. Where your plan pairs this course with a proctored objective assessment, our boundary is unchanged: preparation only, never sitting or assisting during an assessment, and no request for portal credentials.
Three pathways that turned into three lessons?
Send the D187 rubric and your learning goal. You get pathways that share one destination, grouping tied to preassessment evidence and a rationale that reasons rather than repeats.
Six mistakes that stall D187
- Lowering the standard for one group. The moment a pathway aims lower, the plan has become tracking and the central aspect is lost.
- Fewer questions as differentiation. Reducing quantity changes workload, not access, and it usually leaves the same barrier in place.
- Permanent groups. Readiness is skill specific and temporary, and a fixed set of levels contradicts the concept the course teaches.
- Interest as decoration. Choosing a topic students like is only differentiation if it changes how they reach the goal, not if it just relabels the same task.
- A plan that needs two teachers. Feasibility is scored, and a lesson requiring simultaneous attention in four places will be read as untested.
- Folding in required accommodations. Legally required supports are obligations and should be named separately from instructional choices.
Three questions students send about D187
Is D187 the same course as EDUC 6302?
How many groups should a differentiated lesson have?
Is differentiation the same as personalised learning?
Where D187 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.