EDCS - Grad Educ Continuing Studies

This course focuses on the development of skills and knowledge related to the design of online instruction. Participants will develop an instructional design plan, beginning with a needs analysis and progressing through the design cycle to create an online course that meets student requirements for successful online learning. (A Performance Learning Systems online course)

This course focuses on the principles and best z any learning platform. Participants will practice specific online communication skills with multiple tools, manage assessments and feedback appropriately, analyze and solve problems, and create a plan of action for teaching their next online course. This course includes strategies to engage diverse learners, support various learning styles, and handle conflict constructively in the online learning environment. Through class activities, practice course simulations, collaboration with colleagues, and dedicated coaching from the course facilitator, participants will gain the necessary tools to nurture a reflective online learning community. (A Performance Learning Systems online course)

This course equips experienced and beginning educators with the knowledge, awareness, and skills they need to work in today's diverse classroom settings for the goal of student success. Participants will have opportunities to critically examine how privilege and power impact educational outcomes and to understand the role of educators as agents of change for social justice. Learners will use the framework "know yourself, your students, and your practice" to better understand their roles in student achievement. By exploring diversity through multiple perspectives, participants will gain insight into how their own cultural lenses impact their relationships with students and families. (A Performance Learning Systems online course)

This course provides educators with an overview of the Response to Intervention (RTI) framework for providing data-differentiated instruction to meet the needs of today's diverse learners. Participants will learn about assessment and grouping practices for planning differentiated instruction to help students who struggle as well as how to establish structures for successful school wide RTI implementation. Throughout the course, participants will have multiple opportunities to evaluate how RTI can align with their current K-12 classroom and discover occasions for application. (A Performance Learning Systems online course)

This course will familiarize teachers with contemporary gaming technologies, enable them to understand the pedagogical models behind games, and show how these gaming models may be used for learning. Video games provide today's youth with new kinds of learning experiences - like leading a virtual civilization or running a virtual guild with hundreds of other participants from around the real world. Through gaming, children engage in complex problem solving, sophisticated collaboration, and creative expression. However, there is some doubt about the effectiveness of gaming as a learning tool when restricted by old learning models. Today's youth must contend with this dichotomy: life outside school - open access to information, opportunities for deep expertise, multiple pathways for learning - and the learning inside school - traditional learning models, limited access to technology. With growing momentum, a new generation of educators is embracing games for learning. Some are already using learning games like Civilization, a commercially produced game, in the classroom. Promising research shows that games can - and will - become powerful learning environments for children (Barab et al, 2007; Squire & Jenkins, 2003; Squire, 2003). Combining the interactivity inherent in video games with complex learning models, a new generation of games is becoming readily available. Will the education system be ready for this new mode of learning? (A Performance Learning Systems online cours

This course is designed to support teachers in grades three through six with effective writing instruction across content areas. Created specifically for upper-grade teachers, this course begins by focusing on direct writing instruction in a writing workshop. Participants will learn and practice specific craft and mechanics techniques that are tangible for students, supporting visible progress toward more general goals, such as writing with detail, sentence fluency, and voice. These sessions will also address how to support student independence within personal narrative and nonfiction units of study. The second half of this course looks at writing in the content areas, including math, science, and social studies. Participants will learn a broad range of writing formats that can elevate the way students process information and engage with material learned. For each content area, participants will learn strategies for effective writing instruction, ways to model writing formats, ways to support below-grade-level writers, and how to balance expectations of writing and content in formal and informal assessments. (A Performance Learning Systems online course)

This graduate level continuing studies course provides educators and related personnel with the opportunity to develop a personalized plan to meet identified needs within a classroom, school, school district, or community. Educators prioritize their needs and choose the strategies that best suit their individual plan criteria. Upon completion of an approved plan, the participant will develop action research-based solutions. Creativity in project design, experimentation with new pedagogical approaches, or new uses of instructional technology is highly encouraged. The final project will include presentation to colleagues in various settings.

This course focuses on the importance of educating a skilled and knowledgeable student population that is prepared to meet the current and projected demands of a global, 21st century workforce and operate as responsible, involved citizens. Participants explore ways to make K-12 learning more relevant by incorporating strategies and activities into the curriculum that develop real-world skills in students. Self-related skills, ethics skills, social skills, executive function skills, literacy skills, problem-solving skills, creativity and innovation skills, business skills, and societal skills are each addressed in the context of a classroom environment that makes learning relevant and prepares students to be career-ready.

This course is designed for participants who wish to improve their skills and abilities related to effective classroom communication. When students are engaged in meaningful work where everyone contributes to classroom discussions and deep understanding, transfer of knowledge to real-life applications is more likely. Participants will explore ways to communicate clear directions and procedures and how to evaluate their effectiveness. They will also create and analyze instructional outcomes that represent high expectations and rigor. The verbal and nonverbal communication techniques offered in this course provide participants with ways to encourage, redirect, engage, and challenge students. In addition to facilitating effective communication with and among students, participants will explore how to increase their cultural sensitivity to facilitate conversations with families and students.

Using a standards-based approach as its foundation, Student Engagement and Standards-Based Learning explores high-impact learning activities designed to help teachers optimize student learning. Participants will use standards as a basis for designing learning activities, assessments, and scoring guides and will prioritize learning based on curriculum. Using alignment criteria and the POINT design components, participants will evaluate, modify, expand, and design standards-based learning activities in order to maximize student learning, engagement, and achievement. A variety of learning activities aligned to standards and the QFL Process Skills are featured in this course as participants learn to address the needs of 21st Century Learners and foster progress toward deeper retention and transfer of learning.

In the educational realm of Response to Intervention and Differentiation, classroom teachers need practical, research-based strategies that consistently enhance student achievement for ALL students. In this course, participants will explore strategies and design lessons that focus on the learning challenges of diverse learners commonly encountered in an inclusive classroom. This course explores strategies and activities in six areas of instruction that are focused on the academic and social success of a community of learners.

The single most important concern of Christian schools and its educators is the integration of learning, faith, and practice in every aspect of the curriculum. The goal of the course is to guide educators to help students think biblically and critically about every subject and about every aspect of their lives. This course will guide Christian educators to 1) make connections between a biblical worldview and curriculum content, 2) demonstrate a passion for lifelong learning, and 3) help them recognize and use their gifts and talents in a vocation to which God calls them.

Creating Professional Learning Communities Online (PLCs) is a dynamic, results-driven course that emphasizes teamwork, group learning, and professional development. Participants will share ideas, discuss divergent views, and formulate a mutual perspective on how they can significantly improve student achievement. Through team building activities, participants explore the challenges that educators face when forming and sustaining learning communities in schools and districts. By collaborating with classmates, participants learn what a professional learning community can accomplish and how the collective intelligence of an effective team is more powerful than working individually. Collaborative leadership, open communication, and a collective focus on results are explored in detail. At the end of the course, participants will have the skills necessary to form highly-productive PLCs in their schools and districts. They will also have a greater understanding of group learning and how team building strategies lead to student achievement.

This course focuses on the correlation between student learning and the executive function skills of the brain. Mind matters, and strong executive function skills enhance student learning and empower students throughout their academic and professional lives. Participants learn how to develop and strengthen executive function in the areas of organization and planning, focus and attention, working memory, effort and resilience, cognitive flexibility, self-directedness, and inhibitory control. Classroom-applicable strategies are presented in a content-oriented manner that educators can use to strengthen executive function skills in all learners.

This course focuses on the sophisticated skills and habits of mind students need to be successful in post-secondary education, the world of work, and life in general. This course demonstrates the importance of integrating rigor, relevance, and relationships into classroom practice in order to provide these skills and improve achievement throughout the K-12 system. Educators will develop a deeper understanding of the terms as they are used in academic settings and will have multiple opportunities to reflect on their own practices, engage with new ideas, and apply tools and processes to use with their students. This course aligns with the Common Core and the 21st Century Standards.

An instructional coach is chiefly responsible for bringing evidence-based practices into classrooms by working with teachers and other school leaders. This course focuses on the coach's role in classroom management, content enhancement, instruction, asking effective questions, and assessment for learning. Participants will also explore the fundamentals for sustaining a successful coaching program including how to represent the coach's role to staff, building trusting relationships, participating in ongoing training, garnering support from administrators, and providing confidential, nonevaluative job-embedded professional development for teachers. Types of coaching and how to implement effective verbal and nonverbal communication designed to improve expertise in leadership, communication and listening, positive thinking, and support are major course themes, with additional focus on the conferencing and facilitation skills (including confidentiality agreements among coaches, teachers, and principals).

Effective teaching involves the thoughtful selection of instructional strategies based on student needs, subject matter, and the context of the lesson. A differentiated classroom is also one that is physically safe and effectively-managed, with self-responsible students. Teachers who set clear expectations and are able to prevent or respond to behavioral matters that may arise are integral to effective classrooms. Participants will examine ways that students may transfer learning as a result of classroom activities that are tightly aligned to instructional outcomes.

This course that provides educators with research-based theories and specific classroom strategies that support each of the 22 components in Danielson's Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument. Participants explore best practices in the domains of Planning and Preparation, The Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. Participants analyze performance in each domain and create a synthesis action plan for enhancing expertise and teacher practice.

In this course, participants will explore how to promote a safe learning environment where reflection, encouragement, peer review, and goal setting each has a role. Ways to engage students in discussions that promote intellectual, active exploration of content are a primary focus. With a deep exploration of questioning strategies, participants will examine how to facilitate classroom discussions where all students are engaged, all perspectives are sought, and all voices are heard. Participants will also explore how to effectively use questioning to encourage students to ask questions and reflect on peer comments to deepen their understanding and real-life applications.

This course is designed to assist teachers in becoming agents of significant educational and cultural influence in their schools. Candidates will examine their own character and personality traits to create a development plan to determine how they can best use their individual gifts to impact students, colleagues, and stakeholders in their learning community. Candidates will gain understanding of how their personality fits with others' in the solution of problems and in the resolution of conflicts.

This course provides an opportunity for candidates to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of an effective leader of change in the classroom. Candidates will apply the components of change as they conduct and present research on an approved classroom project. Candidates will use classroom data to examine the implementation of the classroom project and assess its effectiveness. Additionally, the course leads candidates to focus on recommendations for future implementation of the project as they focus on change in their classrooms and schools.

This course will address the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of the culturally competent teacher leader, evaluate school culture as it impacts school mission and vision, consider buy-in to school mission and vision, align educational practices to impact student achievement, promote a setting that values the diversity of the school setting, and evaluate the school's effectiveness in communicating with stakeholders to build trust and appreciation of shared values.

To understand how digital primary source archives (e.g. original documents, photographs, maps, posters, charts, sound recordings, statistics, videos, and other items from specific historical contexts) can enhance student learning, participants will use online resources to access and analyze primary sources, think critically about classroom applications, and develop authentic, engaging learning experiences for students. This course introduces a selection of online resources that provides access to primary sources, teaches how to navigate the sites, and shows how to locate appropriate resources. Practical and thought-provoking evaluation techniques help participants analyze primary sources that enrich instructional practices and classroom activities.

This course focuses on the use of accelerated learning strategies and trauma-informed teaching to close the gap between students who are showing proficiency and those who have lost academic ground. The course explores powerful instructional strategies that have been shown to accelerate and maximize student learning. With an emphasis on strategy-based learning and assessments that utilize data-driven decision-making to accelerate learning, the course sets the stage with social-emotional and organizational strategies designed to establish a safe, inclusive, and supportive classroom culture. Participants then explore the newest and most effective cognitive, active, and metacognitive instructional strategies that close the achievement gap and accelerate student learning.

Action research is a process of inquiry and reflection in which educators examine their personal instructional practice systematically, using the techniques of research. This online course addresses concepts associated with action research and the processes and procedures for conducting action research, culminating in the development of an action research plan.

This course will equip students with the knowledge and skills to build a professional network. Topics will include pedagogy resources, professional responsibilities, 21st century networking tools, and ongoing professional growth to support classroom learning and achievement.

How can classroom teachers harness the power of online technologies like blogs, podcasts, and wikis for student engagement and learning? Course participants will experience the Web as more than a source of information, instead using it as a means of constructing new knowledge through conversation, networking, and collaboration. The focus is on tools currently available and how to use them effectively for student research, writing, and learning.

Effective teachers assess student knowledge before, during, and after instruction in order to collect feedback, and understand how and when to adjust teaching and learning appropriately. Purposeful formative and summative assessments may improve student achievement and challenge students at their instructional levels. In this course, participants will explore ways to engage students in collaborative learning, how to monitor student learning, the role of self-assessment and progress monitoring, and how authentic and performance assessment can improve content knowledge, learning, retention, and application.

Participants evaluate instructional strategies designed to promote learner engagement and classroom participation. This course offers strategies to ensure that student choice, roles, expectations, reflection, resources, technology, and differentiation are each considered in student grouping within an environment founded upon respect and rapport for each individual learner. Verbal and nonverbal communication with students and their families, a healthy school environment, and trust are emphasized throughout this course.

This course explores the components of early reading as defined by the National Reading Panel and the International Reading Association. Participants will build a knowledge base, including a portfolio of teaching strategies, for each component and then apply that knowledge in a classroom setting. Several modules will include brief discussions on compatible informal assessments. At the end of the course participants will construct a final capstone lesson plan that incorporates each early reading component for use in the classroom.

Accommodating student interests, explaining outcomes, creating activities, and designing instruction that ensure engagement and success among all students are key ingredients to a flexible and responsive classroom. This course explores strategies for creating a classroom environment designed to support self-directed student learning and teacher-student collaboration with maximum instructional flexibility. Participants will become advocates for students, explore their role in educating families, and examine ways to form effective partnerships with students, teachers, and other stakeholders. To maximize the benefits of flexible and responsive teaching in an equitable classroom, participants will explore the role of implicit biases and the effect these biases have on teachers, students, school leaders, parents, and other stakeholders. Finally, participants will create an action plan designed to help them implement culturally responsive teaching and encourage colleagues to do the same.

This course focuses on the importance of integrating social-emotional learning in the classroom to foster skills that support success. Participants explore seven social-emotional competencies: self-awareness, self-management, selfcare, responsible decision-making, social-awareness, relationship skills, and social-sensing, along with their corresponding components that focus on topics such as emotions, strengths, stress management, self-discipline, resilience, mindfulness, visible thinking, problem-solving, empathy, perspective-taking, communication, teamwork, social justice, and global citizenship to name a few. Classroom-applicable strategies and activities for establishing a social-emotional classroom culture and fostering each of the social-emotional competencies are modeled so that educators can maximize students' learning, personal growth, and success. The course also addresses the compelling whys for social-emotional learning and delves into trauma-informed teaching and the corresponding SEL interventions.

This course provides educators with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, insights, and resources to service English language learners (ELL) in their journey to becoming linguistically proficient while acquiring academic content to compete with native speakers in a consistently competitive global and information-driven society. Because accessing information is vital for all learners, teachers must be prepared to help second language learners in the classroom become self-directed, enabling them to confidently use English in listening, speaking, reading, and writing for social and academic purposes. Participants will become acquainted with the English language learner as well as with the most popular theories and best practices based on a strong body of research that guides second language instruction. The foundation of this course rests on the current Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) standards, which are included in the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) national standards for teacher education. These standards target five domains: language, culture, planning, assessment, and professionalism. TESOL standards aid teachers in constructing learning environments that support second language learning and literacy development as well as content area achievement. Other topics that are explored focus on oral language development, content reading and writing in English, and classroom and standardized assessment in ELL. Literacy inst

This course provides an introduction to a biblical worldview and a Christian philosophy of education. It requires students to examine the presuppositions upon which they base their personal and professional actions and behaviors, and has them develop a coherent worldview. Additionally, the course leads students to develop a philosophy of education based on their worldview, and uses that philosophy to address issues relative to teaching, including the nature and potential of the student, the role of the teacher, the content of the curriculum, teaching methodology, and the social function of the school.