WGU D187: Differentiated Instruction

Why Differentiated Instruction Sits at the Center of Your Teaching Practice

D187, Differentiated Instruction, is a course for practicing and future K–12 educators built on a deceptively simple idea: the students in front of you are not interchangeable. WGU describes the course as an examination of how the classroom environment and students' readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles shape learning — and how a teacher uses that understanding to adjust curriculum, instruction, and assessment for real, individual students. It appears in graduate-level curriculum and instruction study, and it carries no prerequisites, so you can take it early in your term plan.

Direct answer: D187 is not a proctored multiple-choice exam — it is a set of written performance tasks, so you are evaluated on writing directly to the rubric rather than on memorizing content. Read each rubric aspect as a checklist, answer every prompt explicitly in its own labeled section, ground every strategy in specific student data you have described, and cite your sources correctly. Students who do that consistently tend to move through the tasks with far fewer revision cycles.

That distinction matters more than students expect. Many learners arrive at D187 after a string of objective assessments and try to study it the same way — flashcards, content review, cram, sit the test. There is no test to sit. What the course actually asks is whether you can look at a group of learners, gather evidence about what they already know and how they engage, and then build instruction that meets several readiness levels at once without lowering the standard for anyone.

The course also pushes past planning into follow-through: monitoring student progress toward standards, adjusting when the data says your plan isn't landing, and communicating that progress to students and caregivers. If you have taken D184 Standards-Based Assessment or D659 Assessing and Monitoring Student Learning, you will recognize the assessment vocabulary here and move faster.

What the Performance Tasks Actually Ask You to Produce

D187 is assessed entirely through submitted performance tasks — no objective assessment. The tasks build on each other, and publicly listed task titles map to a clear arc:

• Examining the differentiated classroom. An analysis of what differentiation looks like in practice — how a teacher engages every learner and structures the environment so all students can succeed.
• Gathering student information. Strategies for learning about students' interests, readiness, culture, and learning preferences; building learner profiles; and designing or using a diagnostic assessment to measure readiness levels.
• Differentiating content, process, and product. The core differentiation framework applied to a real standard: how you vary what students learn, how they engage with it, and how they demonstrate mastery.
• Monitoring and communicating progress. Ongoing formative checks, data-driven grouping and regrouping, and how you report growth to students and families.

Expect to work with composite students you have profiled yourself, and expect to justify each instructional decision by pointing back to that profile data. "I would use flexible grouping" is not an answer. "Because Student B scored at the emerging level on the pre-assessment and reported a strong interest in sports statistics, I would place her in the group working with graphing real game data" is.

How Hard Is D187, Really?

Most students place D187 in the moderate range. It is not conceptually difficult — the ideas are intuitive to anyone who has spent time in a classroom — but the writing load is real and the rubrics are unforgiving about completeness. Students commonly report finishing in roughly two to four weeks of steady part-time work, though that is anecdotal rather than an official pacing figure; faster completions tend to come from teachers with classroom experience to draw on, slower ones from students who submit before checking every rubric aspect.

The most common reason D187 takes longer than expected is not difficulty but revision cycles. A task that misses one sub-prompt comes back, and the turnaround adds days. Students who front-load careful rubric reading almost always finish faster than students who write fast and iterate. Budget several focused hours per task, plus evaluator turnaround, and you will be planning realistically.

If academic writing itself is your bottleneck rather than the content, the habits from D269 Composition: Writing with a Strategy — outlining to a prompt, one idea per paragraph, clean citation — transfer directly and are worth revisiting before you draft.

A Practical Preparation Plan for a Task-Based Course

Start from the rubric, not the reading. Open the task instructions and the rubric side by side and build your document outline from the rubric aspects, in rubric order, with each aspect as a bolded heading in your draft. This single habit prevents the majority of revisions, and evaluators generally appreciate the signposting if you leave the headings in.

Build one reusable student roster. Create three to five detailed learner profiles early — readiness level, interests, learning preferences, relevant background — and reuse them across tasks. Consistency across your submissions makes your reasoning look coherent and saves you from reinventing students at 11 p.m.

Use active recall on the framework, not the whole course. There is little to memorize, but you should be able to explain content, process, and product; readiness, interest, and learning profile; flexible grouping; tiered assignments; and diagnostic versus formative versus summative assessment without looking them up. Self-quiz on those distinctions until they are automatic — you will use the vocabulary constantly, and precise usage reads as competence.

Write to a real standard. Pick an actual grade-level standard in your content area rather than inventing a vague objective. Concrete standards make the differentiation choices concrete too, and vague objectives are a frequent source of "does not meet" feedback.

Space the work, then let it rest. Draft a task, leave it overnight, and reread it the next morning against the rubric with fresh eyes. Nearly everyone catches at least one missed sub-prompt on that second pass.

Use the course instructor. Course instructors will discuss your approach before you submit. A fifteen-minute conversation about whether your differentiation plan is specific enough is far cheaper than a revision cycle. Cohort sessions serve the same purpose.

For background on how learners differ in the first place, D665 Learner Development and the Science of Learning is a useful companion. You can browse related coursework on the School of Education hub.

Mistakes That Send D187 Tasks Back for Revision

• Writing generically. Describing differentiation in the abstract instead of applying it to your named, profiled students is the single most common failure.
• Answering the prompt you remember instead of the one written. Prompts often contain two or three embedded requirements in one sentence. Number them before drafting.
• Confusing differentiation with lowering expectations. Differentiated does not mean easier for some students; every path must lead to the same standard.
• Skipping the justification. Naming a strategy without explaining why it fits that learner's data leaves the rubric aspect unmet.
• Thin or missing evidence. Claims about effective practice need proper in-text citation and a matching reference list in the required format.
• Reusing anyone else's submitted work. Submitting writing you did not produce risks an academic integrity finding, and originality reports are designed to catch it. Everything you turn in should be your own.
• Ignoring the monitoring piece. Plenty of drafts plan beautiful instruction and then say almost nothing about how progress will be measured and communicated.

Readiness Checklist Before You Submit

• Can you explain the difference between differentiating content, process, and product, with a distinct example of each?
• Can you point to the specific readiness, interest, or learning-profile data behind every instructional choice in your task?
• Can you name the exact grade-level standard your lesson targets, and show that all students reach it?
• Can you describe a diagnostic assessment you would use and explain what its results would change?
• Can you match each rubric aspect to a specific, findable paragraph in your document?
• Can you explain how you would monitor progress over time and regroup students in response?
• Can you describe how you would communicate a student's growth to a caregiver in plain, non-jargon language?
• Is every source cited in text and listed in your references, in the required format?
• Have you reread the submission at least once, on a different day, against the rubric?

D187 FAQ

Is D187 an objective assessment or a performance assessment?

It is a performance assessment course. Your work is submitted in writing and evaluated against rubrics — there is no proctored exam to schedule, which also means no test date pressure, only your own pacing.

How long does D187 usually take?

Students commonly report finishing in about two to four weeks of steady part-time work, but that is anecdotal and timelines vary widely with your writing speed, classroom experience, and how many revision cycles you go through. Working teachers often move faster because they already have real students in mind.

Do I need to be currently teaching to complete the tasks?

No. The tasks are typically built around student profiles you construct, so you can complete them without a live classroom. If you do teach, drawing on real (appropriately anonymized) students usually makes the writing stronger and quicker.

What framework should I know going in?

Be fluent in differentiating by content, process, and product in response to readiness, interest, and learning profile — the standard differentiation framework widely associated with Carol Ann Tomlinson's work — plus the basics of diagnostic and formative assessment and flexible grouping.

What's the fastest way to avoid a revision?

Outline your document directly from the rubric aspects, in order, and confirm every sub-prompt has its own clearly identifiable answer before you submit. Then have your course instructor sanity-check your approach on your first task.

Which courses pair well with D187?

Assessment-focused coursework such as D659 and curriculum design work such as D633 Leadership of Curriculum Design and Instruction reinforce the same vocabulary and planning habits. You can find the full catalog on our all guides index.

This guide is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Western Governors University. Always confirm current course requirements in your official course of study and task instructions at wgu.edu.