Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)
ED106Enhancing Student Learning
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.
ED108Learning Theory and Practice
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.
ED109Preparing and Creating Lesson Plans
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.
ED112Influencing Student Motivation
This course begins by identifying the two most significant issues that influence the motivation of adult students: security and autonomy. The course explains how increasing students' sense of security can enhance their 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 and planning evaluations. The course concludes by comparing and contrasting extrinsic and intrinsic motivators and by suggesting a variety of "miscellaneous motivators" for instructors to consider.
ED113Managing the Adult Classroom
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.
ED114Questioning in the Classroom
Questioning can be one of the most effective classroom teaching strategies. However, many instructors are not familiar with the techniques and research findings associated with good questioning. This course begins by comparing and contrasting the major types of questions and their most appropriate uses. Some relevant statistics and research findings are presented, followed by a discussion of four effective questioning practices. The course concludes by offering a few tips and suggestions for instructors to consider.
ED115RSoft Skills for Instructors
This survey course provides an introductory discussion about how good soft skills help instructors to be successful. A distinction is made between hard skills, soft skills, people skills, and workplace behaviors. Selected soft skills are listed for various categories of businesses and industries, including the teaching profession. Two studies are referenced that highlight skills that are frequently cited in the literature. One study was published in 1997, while the other was conducted specifically for this course in 2024. Selected tips are offered for improving one's soft skills. Numerous hyperlinks are included that direct the reader to a variety of online enrichment materials, including a few online instruments that help individuals learn more about their own soft skills.
ED121Creating Service Learning Opportunities for Students
Service learning programs help students take their knowledge and skills out of classrooms and labs into community settings enabling them to use critical thinking and problem solving abilities. This course provides information about the advantages of using service learning as a teaching tool while enhancing the growth of students. Implementation steps are covered so participants will be able to make service learning a part of program offerings as well as providing career opportunities for students.
ED123Adaptive Learning in Education
This course will provide you with a basic overview of the background and history of an innovative instructional method called Adaptive Learning (AL). AL is growing in popularity and differs from traditional educational methods as it focuses on individualized, personalized instruction for everyone. With the rise of technology, AL has a definite place in education. This course discusses the background, importance, issues, attitude changes, implementation and future of AL. The advantages outweigh any disadvantages as AL can help create individualized instruction and increase student success.
ED143The Most Effective Instructor
The most effective instructors are scholars, but they are also facilitators. Good scholars have a command of knowledge in their field of expertise that is both broad and deep. For a scholar to become an instructor, he or she also needs to be a facilitator. Facilitators help others to learn, which is as important as scholarship. In this course we will define "the scholar" and "the facilitator" as individuals (although they are two aspects of one person), as well as compare and contrast their nature and their roles. You will examine issues and challenges faced by instructors, both on-ground and online, and look at developing and improving your facilitation skills.
ED205Enhancing Students' Professional Skills
Awareness has grown in recent years that, to be effective today, learning must include more than knowledge and "hard skills," or technical ability. In a world where work is often team-based and project-driven, teaching needs also to encompass attitudes and social competencies. This course will describe ways students can enhance their professional skills across the curriculum. Strategies for teaching effective personal interaction and ways to support student professional growth and development will be discussed. This course will also explain how students can improve their writing skills and computer literacy across the curriculum.
ED401Basics of Crisis Management
Crisis management begins with creating and implementing a plan of action that can be executed efficiently and quickly. As an educator, it will be important to recognize signs of crisis in yourself, fellow coworkers, and even students on campus. If you are an administrator, it not only takes a keen eye to recognize signs of crisis in yourself, but this also applies to recognizing crisis in others around you. In this course, you will explore the various aspects of a crisis, how to identify individuals in crisis, and how to appropriately respond to those individuals to improve the overall situation.