Differentiated Instruction Efficiency of the Design Courses for Engineering Majors in a Smart Education Environment

Abstract

The differentiated instructional strategy has been widely applied in countries around the world. However, the differentiated instruction of the design courses for engineering majors still has some barriers in term of learners, teachers, and attributes of the design courses in the smart education environment. To discuss the influences of the differentiated instructional strategy of the design courses for engineering majors on course achievement of learners in the smart education environment, a case study based on the course of “Architectural Interior Hand-painted Renderings” was conducted using two-group pre-test and post-test methods. The differentiated instructional strategy for this course in the smart education environment was designed to investigate its actual effect toward improving the learners’ course achievement, as well as its staged efficiency in preview, classroom learning, and creating learning through the student’s t-test from perspectives of its influence significance and staged efficiency. Results show that compared with traditional instructional strategy, differentiated instructional strategy can improve course achievement of learners significantly. During classroom learning, learners from the differentiated instruction class achieve significant improvements in term of “picture composition”, “line drawing”, “perspective drawing” and “color construction” compared with those during the preview. Learners further achieve significant improvements in terms of “picture composition,” “line drawing,” “perspective drawing,” and “creativity” during creating learning compared with those during classroom learning. Differentiated instruction has significant influences on improvement of the learners’ course achievement at different levels. This study provides method references to differentiated instruction design for engineering majors in smart education environment and offers a way to fulfill personalized needs of differential learners and improve teaching efficiency.