Online Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction

Integrating STEM into Practice

This course will provide an interdisciplinary approach to integrating STEM into practice across the disciplines. The course will involve the participation in problem-based and project-based learning activities, mathematics and science inquiries learning tasks, and using technology to gain and display information. Students will practice backwards design to develop their own STEM learning activity. Graduate students will implement their activity in a classroom and monitor student learning outcomes.

STEM Education and Sustainability

In recent years, there has been a major emphasis on STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) within educational policy and practice. This focus in STEM can be understood from a variety of perspectives such as policy-makers, businesses, institutions of higher education, parents, and our K-12 school systems. In addition to STEM education, there has also beena recent societal-level push for "sustainability."This buzzword has been adopted by a range of players, from the Department of Defense, to institutions education, businesses, local municipalities, and non-governmental organizations, and is equally if not more misunderstood than STEM. This course explores the rich connections and intersections between these two popular discourses. In this class students investigate how STEM education might function as aform of environmental or sustainability education.Students will evaluate the history, policy, and practices of STEM education from an ecological perspective. 

Improving Instructional Effectiveness: Clinical Experience

Study of teacher behaviors that influence the academic achievement of students. Participants learn new effective pedagogy and implement one or more of the various strategies into their diverse clinical placements, gather data, and analyze the impact on student learning. This clinical experience can be completed in a student's current work setting or in a arranged placement determined with their advisors. Students in the medical and advanced teaching master's degree programs must participate in the field experience prior to the completion of their degree.

Applications of Interdisciplinary Learning in STEM Settings

With increasing focus on science and math in K-12 education, teachers are challenged to incorporate content into a variety of classroom disciplines and settings. This course investigates the technical and conceptual application of STEM disciplines in laboratory and applied settings, which includes (but is not limited to) engineering design processes and mathematical modeling. It explores the nature of knowledge in science and math and how this content overlaps and interacts with other forms of knowledge, including identifying and addressing the challenges that misconceptions present and impede teaching and learning.

Mathematics as Problem Solving

This course is appropriate for students who teach mathematics, science or interdisciplinary course work in a variety of school settings and grade levels, K-12. Specific strategies and general heuristics are discussed.

Movements in STEM Equity

With the continued consequences of climate change in communities across the world, we expect to see growing inequity in access to education and natural resources. This course might focus on how educational environments, schools, teachers, and communities can respond to and teach about rapidly changing social, political, economic, and environmental circumstances. This course explores the growth of resilient STEM educators that envision an equitable and empowering STEM education. Students will develop an understanding of diversity and equity by challenging dominant narratives of STEM education that fail to empower students and teachers. The development of STEM identities will be investigated regarding student experiences and the incorporation of instructional practices that empower historically marginalized students.

Applications and Issues of Teaching with Technology

This course provides an overview of the increasingly complex array of digital media and technology-based resources available for use in blended and online environments. Students will apply theory to practice to truly redefine lessons to enhance learning through technology. Students will also learn practical skills, ranging from facilitation skills needed to manage a technology-based class to troubleshooting technology problems.  The course also explores burning issues surrounding educational technology such as inequalities and accessibility issues, technology distractions, internet safety, and other ethical issues. It also examines the disruptive innovation of Generative AI on teaching and learning.

Improving Instructional Effectiveness: Clinical Experience

Study of teacher behaviors that influence the academic achievement of students. Participants learn new effective pedagogy and implement one or more of the various strategies into their diverse clinical placements, gather data, and analyze the impact on student learning. This clinical experience can be completed in a student's current work setting or in a arranged placement determined with their advisors. Students in the medical and advanced teaching master's degree programs must participate in the field experience prior to the completion of their degree.

Attitude Formation and Change in the Classroom

Attitude formation and change theories will be studied relative to generally accepted goals of classroom instruction. Theoretically sound ideas for influencing student attitudes and the value decisions teachers must make when deciding to influence attitudes will be examined. Reactive andunobtrusive measures for assessing student attitudes will be presented. Each participant willbe required to identify a specific attitude related to classroom instruction which she/he would like to change, to review relevant research literature related to the target attitude, to formulate theoretically sound strategies and activities for bringing about the desired attitudechange, and to develop a suitable means for assessing changes in attitudes that result when the attitude change program is used in her/his setting. The focus of the course is on developing ideas that are pertinent to educational settings, but the examples and applications of attitude formation and change ideas will be suitable for other fields as well.

Improving Instructional Effectiveness: Clinical Experience

Study of teacher behaviors that influence the academic achievement of students. Participants learn new effective pedagogy and implement one or more of the various strategies into their diverse clinical placements, gather data, and analyze the impact on student learning. This clinical experience can be completed in a student's current work setting or in a arranged placement determined with their advisors. Students in the medical and advanced teaching master's degree programs must participate in the field experience prior to the completion of their degree.

Gifted: Overview of Teaching Children and Youth who are Gifted, Creative or Talented

This course is an introduction to teaching children and youth who are gifted, creative, or talented. This course provides an introduction to the historical foundations and issues related to the schooling, learning and instruction of students identified as having special educational needs. The focus of this course is the foundational knowledge related to problems and characteristics of students identified as gifted, creative or talented.

Gifted: Creating Learning Environments for Children and Youth who are Gifted, Creative or Talented

This course addresses the issues of learning environments, classroom management, and classroom climate for students who are gifted, creative, or talented. Participants are also introduced to instructional strategies and materials to support students identified as gifted, creative, or talented.

Gifted: Assessment of Children and Youth who are Gifted, Creative or Talented

This course addresses the nature and components ofeffective assessment of learners who are gifted, creative or talented. The candidate will be able to analyze and understand a variety of assessment tools, selecting the appropriate strategy for a designated purpose. In addition, various elements,such as the implications of effective assessment for professional development, and the role of biasand distortion in the assessment process will be discussed. After completing the course, the candidate will also be able to discuss contextual elements, such as cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity and disposition that influence assessment.

Gifted: Collaboration on Behalf of Children and Youth who are Gifted, Creative or Talented

This course addresses issues of collaboration, a cornerstone of effective practice in the educationof students who are gifted, creative, or talented.This course addresses concepts and methods vital to quality collaboration, consultation, and communication. This course addresses the interrelationships among cultural, linguistic, andethnic diversity and giftedness and talent development.The primary purpose of this course, consistent with this mission, is to develop knowledge, understanding, and respect for the needs and requirements of students with diverse learning needs in varied educational settings. Critical to this purpose is an understanding the role of cultural and diversity in identifying children and youth with gifts and talents, as wellas family and cultural issues.

Integrating STEM into Practice

This course will provide an interdisciplinary approach to integrating STEM into practice across the disciplines. The course will involve the participation in problem-based and project-based learning activities, mathematics and science inquiries learning tasks, and using technology to gain and display information. Students will practice backwards design to develop their own STEM learning activity. Graduate students will implement their activity in a classroom and monitor student learning outcomes.

Accessibility and Differentiation in Online and Blended Environments

One of the strengths of the online environment is the ability to collect student data to develop andimprove differentiation for diverse and strugglinglearners. This course provides an overview of how the principles of Universal Design for Learning can be used to design online and blended learning experiences that meet the needs of diverse learners including those who are accelerated and those who are struggling for a variety of reasons.Special attention will be given to integrating technologies that support student engagement, authentic learning, general accessibility supports.

Science Learning in Laboratory and Inquiry Settings

This course explores the historical development oflaboratory and active learning experiences in science curriculum and classrooms. Students will explore the research on science learning through the use of demonstrations, lab activities, studentinquiries, and problem-based learning.

Mathematics as Problem Solving

This course is appropriate for students who teach mathematics, science or interdisciplinary course work in a variety of school settings and grade levels, K-12. Specific strategies and general heuristics are discussed.

Math as an Interdisciplinary Topic

This course will teach activities to help illustrate the connection between mathematics and other subject areas including music, art, social studies, science, and literacy.

Politics of Education

This course explores a range of political issues in American education. The primary focus is on understanding the social and political context that shape educational policies in schools. It examines political decisions that affect the national, state, and local goals of schooling.

Human Development: Adolescence

This course offers an investigation of adolescence(from puberty to emerging adulthood) with an examination of physical, cognitive, cultural, personality, and socio-emotional development.

Critical Pedagogy

This course explores the critical theories including Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and moving through an examination of postmodern, feminist, anti-racist, post colonial and queer theories. Students will read texts and engage in class discussions around the ways these theories speak to goals of social justice and democratic education. The course will invite personal and critical reflection on the ways in which identities, relationships, and knowledge are impacted by dominant ideologies and cultures surrounding education.

Cognitive Development

Comprehensive overview of origins and developmental change in children's thinking and individual differences in cognition.

Brain Development, Cognition and Learning

This course is an introduction to the neurophysiological development of children, and aims to integrate knowledge of brain development with learning and cognitive development. Typical and atypical development of learning, perceiving, cognition, memory and affect are examined.

Applications and Issues of Teaching with Technology

This course provides an overview of the increasingly complex array of digital media and technology-based resources available for use in blended and online environments. Students will apply theory to practice to truly redefine lessons to enhance learning through technology. Students will also learn practical skills, ranging from facilitation skills needed to manage a technology-based class to troubleshooting technology problems.  The course also explores burning issues surrounding educational technology such as inequalities and accessibility issues, technology distractions, internet safety, and other ethical issues. It also examines the disruptive innovation of Generative AI on teaching and learning.

Designing Online Assessments for Data-Driven Decisions

Data is at the core of educational reform and should be used to inform teaching practice. The purpose of this course is to design assessments that allow instructors to make data-driven decisions to improve their instruction. It will include the evaluation and comparison of currently employed measures of assessment in online environments for their effectiveness in evaluating learner progress and underlying instructional methods. The course will cover the continuous improvement cycle of online assessments.  Beginning with backward design, students will learn how to align learning outcomes, learning activities, and online assessments. Based on intended learning outcomes, students will design a variety of formative and summative assessments and learn how to use technology to improve the quality of those assessments.  Finally, students will analyze the data generated from these assessments to create an instructional plan to improve student learning, enhance their instructional activities, and make adjustments to the assessments.

Universal Design for Learning in Blended and Online Contexts

This course provides an overview of how the principles of Universal Design for Learning can be used to design online and blended learning experiences that meet the needs of diverse learners including those who are accelerated and those who are struggling for a variety of reasons. Special attention will be given to integrating technologies that support student engagement, authentic learning, and general accessibility supports.

Design of Blended and Online Learning Environments

This course guides students through the process of designing and developing successful online learning. Students will explore a variety of learning environments, learn how to incorporate instructional models, instructional strategies, and digital media effectively into the design process, and create a complete instructional unit that promotes learner engagement and motivation.

Learning Sciences and Technology

This course provides a fundamental understanding of learning sciences, an interdisciplinary field dedicated to studying learning and how learning may be facilitated in designed environments. Students will design a technology-based learning environment and conduct an evaluation of the embedded theories in an existing environment of their choice, such as digital media, games, or other innovative technologies.

Disciplinary Literacy in the Secondary School

This course addresses how literacy strategies are used in each of the secondary school disciplines of social studies, mathematics, science and the foreign languages. Candidates will learn how to create lessons suitable for all types of learners in their content specializations. In addition, candidates will learn how to utilize a variety of technologies for secondary school students (grades7 to 12) in their respective content areas. This course should be taken concurrently with a field experience.

Reading, Writing & Critical Literacies in Secondary Schools

This course includes a 60-clock-hour field experience in an urban high school and is requiredfor candidates pursuing an Ohio Adolescent to Young Adult English Language Arts teaching license. The course emphasizes instructional and assessment strategies for teaching critical literacies in secondary schools.

Adolescent Literature, Media & Popular Culture

This course, required for candidates pursuing an Ohio Adolescent to Young Adult English Language Arts teaching license, explores and critiques response-based approaches to literary texts as well as expanded notions of textuality (e.g. literature, popular culture, media, information), and critical approaches to all of the above.

Foundations of Language and Literacy Acquisition for Diverse Readers

This course examines the cognitive and neurological processes involved in oral language and literacy development. It explores theoretical models that inform reading acquisition and development. This course also helps educators to identify explicit and systematic instruction built on the interrelatedness between language and literacy. Recognition of characteristics, strengths, and needs of diverse reader profiles (i.e., students with dyslexia and other reading disabilities, English learners, and emergent bilinguals) and how to address their unique learning needs through effective instruction is considered and discussed.

Literacy as a Linguistic and Cultural Tool

This course examines the social, cultural, and community aspects of literacies, the linguistic and cultural aspects of learning English as a additional language, and the ways in which schoolsmight recognize, maintain, develop, and build uponthe "ways with words" that contemporary students acquire and learn in out-of-school contexts. The course is based on a sociocultural view of literacy, encompassing multidisciplinary approaches and focuses on key sociocultural arguments, influential studies, and their classroom implications.