IDEAL Courses

This course is set up to help practitioners develop a site plan for offering distance or blended learning to adult learners. It is also a prerequisite for IDEAL 102: Instructional Issues or IDEAL Program Administration. Over the course of six weeks, all participants will work with colleagues within their agency (teams generally consist of one admin/manager and at least one teacher per agency) to develop a plan that addresses:

1. Recruitment: where will your agency look for students who will study online?
2. Screening: how will you screen to be sure you have online-ready learners?
3. Orientation: how will you clearly communicate the requirements of being a distance or blended learning student and orient students to the online materials and curriculum?
4. Instruction: what curriculum will you offer students? How will you support and communicate with students who are studying on their own?
5. Assessment: how will you keep track of distance and blended learning students, monitor their progress, and collect data?

In the months following the course, each team will work to implement their site plan – supported by monthly webinars with all participants to share progress and ask questions.

Distance or blended learning teachers who have some experience teaching online will spend four weeks focusing on how to best support learners. Each participant develops a case study describing an instructional challenge. Together the cohort discusses each of the case studies, building a “community of practice” that remains available as a resource after the course is done. Through the discussion, each participant arrives at a few ideas to pilot. After a month of piloting, each teacher reports on their success in a webinar.

This course is for program managers who have had some experienced with distance or blended learning. The class is built around relevant articles and developing a case study, which the class discusses. It is an opportunity for program managers to share insight and information with each other. Through interaction with assigned literature and discussion of their case studies, each participant arrives at a few ideas to pilot to solve the issue described in the case study. After a month of piloting, they report back on their success in a webinar. Participants will also have the opportunity to gather information and develop narrative text that they can use in grant applications and state reporting.

Blended learning and distance teachers with some prior experience will spend four weeks learning about how to evaluate online resources for using in distance and blended learning. Through several readings and discussion, the cohort will create a rubric for future resource evaluation and then pilot its use with one new learning resource they hope to integrate into their online instruction.

IDEAL 102: Teaching a HyFlex Class study circle aims to provide an opportunity for HyFlex teachers to share challenges, possible solutions, and resources with each other. The course includes reading and videos, discussion boards, the use of ed tech tools such as Padlet and Jamboard, and also has three optional live class webinars. Alternatively, the course provides online asynchronous options for those who are unable or choose not to join the live class webinars.

As more programs are offering some range of in-person and remote learning options, instructors are challenged to determine how to strategically leverage technology in manageable ways to enhance and expand student learning. The goal of this course is to design strategic, replicable edtech routines that can be part of instructors’ regular practice while developing students’ digital literacy.

The EdTech Maker Space is a service-learning professional development engagement opportunity that leverages crowdsourcing to engage participants in generating high-quality, reusable open education resources (OER). Using the EdTech Maker Space Project Design + Facilitation Guide, participants will formulate a plan for running an EdTech Maker Space project that addresses a particular learning resource need while developing instructors’ skills in using various educational technologies.