Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning

Effective learning experiences start with a clear plan. Decisions about what to teach, how to teach, and how to ensure students are achieving important learning goals confront every college instructor. Education professionals are introduced to concepts of planning curriculum and courses, establishing goals and outcomes, aligning outcomes with professional or disciplinary standards, prioritizing content, and planning for student engagement and active learning in this course. They engage in discussions and activities that emphasize the development of decision-making processes, which they can use to create effective plans for learning. Through an integrative course project, education professionals apply course concepts as they develop a learning plan that incorporates learning goals and teaching and assessment strategies.

A growing body of literature on effective practices in higher education highlights the importance of student engagement in the learning process. In this course, education professionals explore principles and processes for creating meaningful, student-centered learning experiences in a variety of educational contexts, including ways of using technology to support learning. They focus on how they can address the needs of diverse learners using active learning strategies, share responsibility for learning with their students, and empower their students to become more self-directed. Education professionals also learn to anticipate and address the challenges that self-directed approaches might create for students who are more familiar with traditional learning environments.

Assessment in college teaching involves several critical processes: giving students meaningful tasks that allow them to demonstrate their learning; providing feedback that enables students to improve their performance; and using data about student learning to continually improve teaching. Education professionals are provided with opportunities to design and discuss approaches to evaluation and assessment that support learner motivation and development, track progress toward outcomes, and gain information they can use to inform their own practice, including ways that technology can augment these approaches. Through this course, education professionals can learn what it means to engage in teaching scholarship—the process of investigating their teaching and sharing demonstrably effective approaches with their peers.

Online learning represents the fastest growing sector of higher education and is used in a variety of contexts. Education professionals in this course analyze how online learning can serve as a supplement to textbooks and traditional classroom instruction, a substitute for face-to-face time in blended or hybrid classes, and the exclusive method of learning in fully online courses and programs. They explore how online learning presents special opportunities as well as challenges to faculty and  students. Through the development of an online learning experience, education professionals practice strategies for planning, facilitating, and assessing learning online, and they gain a better understanding of how to use online learning technologies to enhance learning and motivate students.