Dustin Davis

Excellence in Teaching
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 06/18/2024

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

This course will provide an overview of career readiness including information and activities that may be incorporated into your courses. This course, which forms Part I of a two-part series, provides details about four specific career readiness skills: critical thinking/problem solving, verbal/written communications, teamwork/collaboration, and information technology applications. Additional thoughts and resources will also be provided to allow you to consider multiple ways to assist students in developing these skills in your courses.
This introductory course covers the essential roles of a teacher and the competencies required to be a successful instructor in an educational institution. Proven techniques and strategies for planning and preparation are presented and discussed. In addition, the course offers effective methods for conducting the first class meeting and delivering course content. This course provides a solid foundation for new instructors and serves as an excellent refresher for more experienced instructors.
The instructor is the real key to student retention at any educational institution. Instructors must keep focused on student motivation and retention each and every day of class. Developing strategies for retaining students throughout the entire training sequence is both complex and rewarding. All instructors should have the goal of seeing all of their students successfully complete their class. This course helps you reach that goal by helping you to understand your students and use proven motivation and retention techniques to keep them enrolled and engaged in the learning process.
Educators work with students who want to learn specific skills that will lead to fulfilling careers. As educational instructors it is our job to help each student to achieve this goal. Just as you may have a particular style of teaching that you prefer, your students have preferred ways of learning. This course will help you to identify the different learning styles of your students so that you can adjust your instruction to better accommodate them. Good teachers also regularly monitor the effectiveness of their instruction by assessing their students’ learning. This course will examine several aspects of assessment including how to create good tests, how to ask effective questions and how to get your students to actively participate in their learning by asking questions themselves.
This course provides methods and techniques for managing students and class activities. We start by reviewing the steps instructors need to follow as they introduce a class to new students. We then discuss strategies to effectively deal with unfocused and challenging students. The course ends by describing common mistakes made by instructors and ways to avoid them.
This course shows instructors how to develop a comprehensive approach to effective and efficient instruction. From preparation for the classroom to selection of instructional delivery methods, the course provides effective ways of planning instruction to help instructors keep the content focused and the students engaged. We also cover the steps to set up a complete evaluation system that will work in all settings.
This course provides methodologies and examples to help instructors increase content retention and application by students in need of support. The course starts by covering the skills needed by instructors to be clear communicators. We then discuss ways instructors can become effective in monitoring students and using student groups as learning tools. The course concludes by covering techniques and strategies to instruct diverse learners, including learners with disabilities.
Retention is an issue, and what happens in the classroom is a critical factor influencing a student's decision to stay or go. The classroom environment may be hurting your students' view of the quality of your programs. In this course, you will learn tips and techniques to deal with environmental influences such as your role as the instructor, the classroom, the interactive activities, the support materials, and the sequence of instruction as well as other subtle influences. You will learn to view the environment from the student's perspective to increase your teaching effectiveness and student retention.
This course covers the different ways individuals learn and apply new knowledge. We start by covering the steps the brain goes through as it processes new information, and how knowledge is stored and retrieved. We then discuss how intelligence is measured and how learners process information through the use of multiple intelligences. Moving from theory to practice, the course shows instructors how to use the learning needs of students to increase knowledge acquisition and retention. The course includes a number of easy to implement strategies to help students retain and use new content.
This course will inform you of how careful lesson planning can help to ensure increased student engagement. Proper lesson planning will enable you to teach effectively and efficiently, and ultimately help students meet learning objectives. The information in this course will provide the framework for instructional development enabling you to properly structure a detailed, well thought-out lesson plan.
Outstanding teachers serve their students by guiding them through their coursework and motivating them to complete program requirements. Instructors at educational institutions are often faced with high stress resulting from heavy teaching loads and limited time. When teachers cannot manage their own time and stress, they cannot fully serve the needs of their students. This course will show instructors how to manage time and stress in their lives and teach some of these skills to their students.
This course provides an introduction to the concept and philosophy of active learning, and describes a variety of methods to help instructors "activ-ate" their class. The course includes active learning examples that utilize both critical and analytical thinking skills. We also identify the risks that may discourage instructors from using active learning strategies and offer suggestions for managing them. A three-step method is suggested for developing an active lesson, and a comprehensive model is offered as a guide for creative active learning strategies.
This course is intended to offer a practical explanation of how an instructor’s behaviors and choices can influence the motivation of students. It is not intended to be a theoretical or academic treatise about motivation. Module 1 offers useful tips that may help instructors to motivate students. Students’ security and autonomy are described as they influence motivation during instruction, questioning, activities, and evaluations. This is followed by a discussion of how motivation can be improved by enhancing students' sense of autonomy when making assignments, selecting instructional methods, implementing classroom procedures, and developing evaluations. In Module 2, intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are defined and compared. Finally, a variety of "miscellaneous motivators" are offered for instructors to consider.
This course compares and contrasts four styles of classroom management. The course includes "virtual visits" to animated classrooms where participants observe four instructors who exhibit different management styles. The style that is preferred by most students is identified and described, and suggestions are offered on how instructors can modify their personal style to increase their effectiveness. A four-step model for developing successful classroom management strategies is presented and is followed by a discussion of a practical, behavioral approach to classroom management. Characteristics that foster good discipline in the educational institution and in the classroom are listed and explained, and tips are offered that can improve both institution-wide and classroom discipline. Finally, a number of scenarios involving common discipline problems are described.
The purpose of this course is to provide instructors with a very basic introduction to the concepts of soft skills and emotional intelligence (EQ). It is designed especially for new instructors in career schools who have little or no training in educational techniques and who are unfamiliar with the basics of emotional intelligence. The course provides a comparison of hard and soft skills, including people skills and workplace behaviors. Ten important soft skills are discussed in detail and the relationship between EQ and soft skills is explained. The course concludes with tips and suggestions to help instructors enhance their soft skills and EQ.
The majority of careers require the ability to think critically and problem solve at one level or another. Employers seek individuals who can think independently, propose solutions, and solve problems. The content in this course provides the foundation for critical thinking and demonstrates how people with different interests, abilities, and aptitudes approach problem solving. The course covers the different kinds of intelligence and how they impact critical thinking, for a broader understanding of how people process solutions to problems. It concludes with step-by-step instructions for helping students develop and refine their own critical thinking skills.
This course is an overview of a variety of ways in which educators can integrate technology and web resources into instructional courses, in order to engage learners and promote collaborative learning. A variety of strategies are included in this course to enhance the use of technology so it becomes an integral part of ongoing instructional practice. In addition, numerous links are provided to enable participants to gain more insight into how technology can be explored, secured and utilized in their courses.
While educators increasingly use technology in the lab setting, many don't know where to start when trying to use it during didactic instruction. Furthermore, administrators have a hard time rolling out these initiatives. This course will go through the stages of a solid rollout plan to take advantage of available technologies. It will also discuss how to teach with technology as an enhancement to education, not a replacement. This course helps instructors, administrators and support staff to better understand how to use these tools.
The classroom in an educational institution is often more than just chairs, books, and a white board. Frequently the learning takes place in a lab or shop environment, where the traditional rules of classroom management and teaching may not always apply. This course covers the instructional techniques necessary for the non-traditional classroom, including strategies for teaching to each student's individual learning style. In addition, this course describes strategies for assessing student progress. Safety guidelines and considerations for specific lab and shop environments are identified.