MICRO-CREDENTIALS
Expand Your Skills. Invest in your future through targeted training for any level. You can start small with micro-courses. Earning 5-7 micro-course badges leads to the completion of a micro-credential in online teaching and learning. Micro-courses give skills and knowledge in areas that will help prepare for the virtual classroom environment. The micro-credentials can set up educators to continue learning with a certificate, master’s, and post-master’s programs should they choose to proceed into IWU’s stackable pathway. Ready to jump in? View the available micro-credentials below.
Foundations of Effective Online Teaching
The Foundations of Effective Online Teaching Micro-Credential is designed to provide educators with just-in-time resources for teaching in the P-12 online environment. Educators will explore meaningful ways to create and engage in their Personalized Learning Network; how to find and construct Open Educational Resources for the needs of their students and classroom; learn the standards, theories, models, and policies that undergird best pedagogical practices for the P-12 online classroom; the qualities and characteristics of effective online teachers; how to build authentic relationships and community in an online classroom, and so much more. This certificate equips educators with a powerful self-directed professional development platform that will reach far beyond the scope of this micro-credential.
BADGES - Click each badge title to read the description
Take charge of your own professional development though learning how to create collaborative spaces with educator colleagues, mentors, and professionals. As new information and ideas are changing the world at a faster pace than ever before, the Personalized Learning Network is a global online community of teachers who share, connect, create, and communicate through technology and social media. Teachers! Build your PLN!
Discover P-12 Open Educational Resources (OER) to meet your online teaching and learning needs. OER allow teachers to save time creating teaching materials from scratch, yet still have access to materials that support student learning engagement. OER have created an extraordinary opportunity for educators to customize teaching and learning as well as sharing knowledge in various forms across communities, states, and even countries. With OER, any teacher has access to thousands of high-quality online instructional resources in a wide spectrum of content areas anytime for free. Free to Learn!
Is online learning really effective? Yes! Learn the educational standards, theories, models and policies (Such as International Society for Technology and Education (ISTE), National Standards for Quality Online Teaching (NSQOT, TPACK, and more) that undergird and guide quality online teaching and learning best practices. As online learning becomes more mainstream, it is critical for educators to know where to go to support their teaching practices, curriculum development, technology integration…and all that jazz!
What characteristics, qualities, and skills does it take to be a successful online teacher? Good teaching is good teaching and the qualities that make you an effective teacher in the face-to-face classroom will also serve you well in the online classroom. Discover the how to become an online teacher rock star in today’s educational environments.
What to do when the classroom moves online? This Online Teacher Survival Pack badge explores the foundations of effective online instruction, including principles of learner-centeredness, qualities of successful online teachers, and preparation for being an online teacher. Don’t go it alone!
Personalizing the student learning experience in an online classroom is more than having a Zoom session or uploading content to a website. It looks deeper at a student’s learning needs, harnessing their strengths, and offering differentiated instruction, just as a teacher would in a traditional or blended learning environment. Personalized instruction allows educators to accelerate and strengthen student learning by adapting online curriculum to fit student learning needs. Explore just-in-time practices for personalized learning made possible!
What is community? What do student-teacher relationships look like in the online classroom? Why is creating community an important aspect in the educational process, especially in online environments? Examine answers to these questions and more by learning to create a community of inquiry (CoI) and the impact on student learning and engagement.