Online MS in Education in Curriculum and Instruction — Courses

This “boot camp” seminar is designed to help you to understand the knowledge and skills necessary for your successful online learning in the C&I Online MS program. In this orientation, you will explore what online learning entails and reflect on how you can best set yourself up to succeed in your studies. You will also learn about various learning strategies and online resources that you can utilize in your courses.

Total Credits: 1

This seminar is designed to help you to understand the knowledge and skills necessary for your success throughout the Curriculum and Instruction program. In addition to providing you with information that will help you succeed in the program, you are also asked to think about ways to make yourself more marketable to future employers. You will also practice group project skills and group work.

Total Credits: 1

This course focuses on current trends influencing curriculum and instruction. Trends include recent theories, policies, histories, and research that are pivotal in education. Focus on understanding sources of current trends and how they may influence work in curriculum and instruction.

Total Credits: 3

The course will examine the critical role they play in creating conditions for their continuous and systematic improvement by conducting a case study while concurrently developing their teacher leadership. Participants will gain understanding of how relationships fostered through various coaching and leadership models can improve teacher practices. Students will develop products representing their growth in understanding of teacher leadership and school improvement.

Total Credits: 3

This course conceptually centers on the Ghanaian Sankofa symbol of a bird retrieving an egg from its back while facing forward. This metaphor represents the need to “go back to the past and bring forward that which is useful" (About the Sankofa [n.d.]. Retrieved from https://cola.siu.edu/africanastudies/about-us/sankofa.php) . The twin aspect of looking back with the future in mind plays out in consonance with the Portfolio course generally taken in tandem with this course. In this course, students will reinforce and extend their learning of key concepts across the program and deepen their engagement with a topic of interest to them through an action research project. This course should be taken after completion of all other core and concentration area courses.

Total Credits: 3

This course was created to help guide C&I students near completion of their coursework to develop their competency portfolio. A competency portfolio reflects the depth and breadth of a student’s educational growth since entering the graduate program. The purpose of the C&I competency portfolio is to demonstrate that students have mastered the graduate competencies for the C&I online Master’s program. The portfolio will contain student projects aligned with C&I competencies and will be reviewed by committee members. The competencies are based on the Curriculum & Instruction departmental competencies and several program-specific competencies. The competency portfolio is a requirement for graduation from the C&I Master’s program. This course should be taken after completion of all other core and concentration area courses.

Total Credits: 1

In-service teachers engage in issues surrounding equity in mathematics education — learning to provide meaningful opportunities for all students to learn in mathematics classes. You’ll learn to consider the learning needs of particular groups of students while at the same time avoiding reducing differences among students to stereotypes. Issues of diversity here include, ace, culture, gender, disabilities, language, SES, and sexual orientation.

Total Credits: 3

Words like culture, difference, diversity, and equity permeate discussions about education in our contemporary, global moment. Simultaneously, however, there has been increasing political and popular pressure to produce an educational system rooted in accountability via standardized curricula and assessments – artifacts that ostensibly suggest that identity and culture are not crucial factors in educational development. This course invites students to explore the complimentary concepts of identity and culture in order to foster an ethical educational disposition and practice in regards to people unlike ourselves. We will explore the concepts of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, belief, and ability as elements that comprise culture – and in doing so to develop critical questions around our own identities, perceptions of others, and roles as educators. When you complete this course, you will have developed capacities to situate your teaching, research, and comprehension of our relationships to one another within an ethical framework that extends from your own identity and cultural context(s).

Total Credits: 3

This course addresses second language instruction and subject-matter instruction in English for ELL students. You’ll be provided with information necessary to design materials and instructional strategies for English language learners P-12. The course considers the nature of immigrants’ experiences of a new country and school context while focusing on the current issues and techniques in instruction for students who are at the beginning or intermediate stages of English language acquisition in the school context. This course requires field experiences in schools.

Total Credit: 3

You will gain information about central concepts from descriptive and applied linguistics, applying these to analyze language and interaction between teachers and ELs for effective teaching. The major assignments for the course are two classroom observations and the planning, teaching, and evaluation of two lessons conducted with small groups of ELs. This course requires field experiences in schools.

Total Credit: 3

Learn how second languages are learned so you can link English-language development to teaching and learning strategies. In addition to a case study and final report, students will collaborate in small groups to create online multimedia poster presentations that summarize key points and issues. This course requires field experiences in schools.

 Total Credits: 3

This course provides a critical review of research and practice in language proficiency and content-area assessment of English Language Learners (ELLs) and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in K-12 education. We will explore the sociocultural dimensions of standardized testing, academic achievement, and accountability. Students will conduct critical analyses of standardized testing instruments and learn to develop alternative classroom-based language, literacy and content-area assessments appropriate for ELL and CLD students.

Total Credits: 3

This course focuses on the linguistic challenges faced by English language learners in the content areas of science, language arts, mathematics, and the social studies. The course links these challenges to English language instruction and subject-matter instruction in English for ELLs. The course emphasizes assessment tools designed to assess content knowledge and links these to issues of language development. This course requires field experiences in schools.

Total Credits: 3

Explore the foundational principles and philosophies of gifted education, including characteristics and identification of students with gifts and talents. Learn about talent development strategies that support various conceptions of giftedness, including intellectual, academic, creative, artistic, and leadership. Learn how to select high-quality instructional materials and use research-supported methods, to design challenging learning experiences for your most capable students.

Total Credits: 3

Learn established program and curriculum models, as well as the nuts and bolts of developing curricular plans, materials, and specialized programs that support the advanced learning needs of gifted students.

Total Credits: 3

Gain an understanding of the social-emotional characteristics and needs of gifted students and explore twice exceptionality, underachievement, diversity issues, and family/parenting concerns as well as an introduction to current educational approaches and counseling interventions.

Total Credits: 3

Apply theories to practice through individualized assignments relevant to your instructional setting so you develop an advanced ability to support gifted, creative, and talented students. This course requires students to work with high-ability children in an educational setting.

Total Credits: 3

This course is an introduction to the principles of designing instructional materials and to instructional communication theory and techniques. Topics include objectives, student characteristics, media selection, communication variables, message design, and systematic evaluation..

Total Credits: 3

This course focuses on techniques for and issues related to integrating computers in learning environments. Topics covered stem from literature in the field and include (1) theoretical foundations of technology integration, (2) teaching and learning issues with technology integration, (3) designing the application of learning technologies for use in educational settings, and (4) emerging issues in research and practice with technology integration. Class activities are designed to model applications of learning technology, while class projects allow individuals to develop skills and knowledge in areas of your personal need or interest. The goal of the course is to help you develop an understanding of important issues associated with the integration and management of technology in learning and to effectively plan, design, implement, and evaluate technology-based instruction.

Total Credits: 3

This course provides an historical overview of the field and delineates the foundational knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed by professionals in the field of educational technology and instructional design. Students explore the field by engaging in collaborative projects along with thinking and writing about various aspects of educational technology and the underlying instructional design theories.

Total Credits: 3

This course provides an introduction to the field of human performance technology (HPT). It examines basic concepts and principles of human performance, the theoretical underpinnings of the field, research and application literature, and various approaches to solving human performance problems. A systematic approach to the analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation of performance improvement interventions within organizations is emphasized.

Total Credits: 3

Teachers of STEM will recognize the link between productive assessment and productive instruction, using STEM education standards for teacher competence in educational assessment. This course also helps you meet professional standards, and understand the public pressure as well as instructional need for effective formative and summative assessment.

Total Credits: 3

Develop models of learner’s understandings of different facets of number and operation and then combine those models and our emergent understanding of curriculum to explore challenges in teaching and learning.

Total Credits: 3

Explore ways of teaching algebra, focusing on concerns related to student performance in algebra and increasing algebraic reasoning skills in the classroom. The course includes experiences with inquiry-based learning by engaging participants in algebra activities from two secondary National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards-based curricula. The course will provide opportunities for participants to collaborate on the development of algebraic thinking in mathematics classrooms.

Total Credits: 3

Explore research in the teaching and learning of geometry and measurement. A synthesis of select literature will inform our efforts to develop models of learners’ geometric reasoning and understanding of measurement. We will move past the development of models to the design of instruction meant to support understandings of concepts that utilizes technology.

Total Credits: 3

This course will provide middle-school mathematics teachers a larger understanding of data analysis and probability as a way to analyze and interpret experienced events while teaching various methods of instruction. The course will teach you to select and use appropriate statistical methods to analyze data, develop and evaluate inferences and predictions from data, and understand and apply the basic concepts of probability.

Total Credits: 3

Explore the implications for teaching, learning and teacher education through an evaluation of integrated approaches to STEM, national teaching standards and current research. This course introduces common learning theories and integrated STEM pedagogies, including project/problem-based (PBL), design-based and inquiry-based approaches to teaching. Learn to plan and create integrated STEM instruction for K-12 classrooms. In this course, you will also critically examine current trends in the research, policy and practices of STEM education to identify sources of inequities across classrooms, schools, districts and communities.

Total Credits: 3

This methods course focuses on operationalizing the theoretical pedagogical approaches to integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Agriculture (STEM) education. Collaboratively and cooperatively investigate, plan and deliver integrated learning experiences appropriate for secondary education through coursework that blends philosophical considerations with practical application.

Total Credits: 3

Engineering and technology design has gained considerable traction in many K-12 schools. In this course, we will examine principals of engineering design and technology as well as where and how engineering and technology design best fits in a K-12 integrated STEM curriculum. Course participants will engage in authentic engineering and technology design experiences. Course participants will also design, develop, deliver integrated lessons that help K-12 students develop the knowledge, skills, and practices of engineering and technology design.

Total Credits: 3

Learn to recognize the link between productive assessment and productive instruction, using STEM education standards for teacher competence in educational assessment. This course will also help you meet professional standards and understand the public pressure as well as the instructional need for effective formative and summative assessment.

Total Credits: 3

This course provides an introduction to the field of human performance technology (HPT). It examines basic concepts and principles of human performance, the theoretical underpinnings of the field, research and application literature, and various approaches to solving human performance problems. A systematic approach to the analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation of performance improvement interventions within organizations is emphasized.

Total Credits: 3

This course addresses the fundamentals of educational/learning technologies within both the traditional classroom, as well as the corporate/business training environments. Students will explore and evaluate various tools/technologies and determine how, when, and why such technologies can/should be infused into normal, hybrid, or fully online learning situations. The goal of the course is to help the student plan, implement, and evaluate technology for teaching and learning.

Total Credits: 3

This course focuses on techniques for and issues related to integrating computers in learning environments. Topics covered stem from literature in the field and include (1) theoretical foundations of technology integration, (2) teaching and learning issues with technology integration, (3) designing the application of learning technologies for use in educational settings, and (4) emerging issues in research and practice with technology integration. Class activities are designed to model applications of learning technology, while class projects allow individuals to develop skills and knowledge in areas of your personal need or interest. The goal of the course is to help you develop an understanding of important issues associated with the integration and management of technology in learning and to effectively plan, design, implement, and evaluate technology-based instruction.

Total Credits: 3

This course involves the exploration of educational applications of multimedia. Examination and application of related research is a key component of the course. Projects involve the creation of instructional materials incorporating multimedia (e.g. sound, photographs, video, and/or interactive elements). Usability and usability testing considerations are explored.

Total Credits: 3

This course has been designed to provide an in-depth study of motivation as one of the fundamental variables underlying human learning, behavior and instructional design. The focus of the course is on two areas: 1) theories of motivation and the general principles that have contributed to the field of instructional design, and 2) how those principles are selected and applied within practical design settings.

Total Credits: 3

An introductory course in educational research and evaluation methodology which considers the various methods of educational research, the formulation of research hypotheses, and the preparation of research reports.

Total Credits: 3

This course provides a solid foundation and set of principles for differentiating curriculum and instruction in any classroom at any grade level. Students will explore a variety of evidence-based strategies, tools, and curriculum models that effectively meet the diverse needs of all learners. Through readings, online class meetings and discussions, case studies, differentiated instruction examples, direct application, and reflection, students will deepen their understanding and need to differentiate. With an overarching goal of increasing achievement and developing student talents, this course includes the following major components: creating positive learning environments that support a) high-quality curriculum; b) diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments to inform instructional decision-making; and c) flexible grouping; addressing student differences in readiness, interest, and learning profile (including learning preference, intelligence preference, gender, culture, language preference, locale, and opportunities to learn) and appreciating how these differences influence the ways in which students learn and are motivated; understanding that the process of differentiation involves modifying content, process, product, learning environment, and/or affect; incorporating higher-order thinking skills, creative problem solving, project-based learning, authentic/respectful tasks, collaborative learning, and other evidence-based strategies to promote student achievement and talent development; understanding how differentiation of curriculum and instruction fits within specific educational interventions and models, such as scaffolding, flexible grouping, Response to Intervention (RTI), and Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS).

Total Credits: 3