Robert Ruffin

Excellence in Teaching
CHEP Status: Expired
CHEP Awarded: 08/16/2018

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

This introductory course covers the essential roles of a teacher and the competencies required to be a successful instructor in an educational institution. Proven techniques and strategies for planning and preparation are presented and discussed. In addition, the course offers effective methods for conducting the first class meeting and delivering course content. This course provides a solid foundation for new instructors and serves as an excellent refresher for more experienced instructors.
The instructor is the real key to student retention at any educational institution. Instructors must keep focused on student motivation and retention each and every day of class. Developing strategies for retaining students throughout the entire training sequence is both complex and rewarding. All instructors should have the goal of seeing all of their students successfully complete their class. This course helps you reach that goal by helping you to understand your students and use proven motivation and retention techniques to keep them enrolled and engaged in the learning process.
Educators work with students who want to learn specific skills that will lead to fulfilling careers. As educational instructors it is our job to help each student to achieve this goal. Just as you may have a particular style of teaching that you prefer, your students have preferred ways of learning. This course will help you to identify the different learning styles of your students so that you can adjust your instruction to better accommodate them. Good teachers also regularly monitor the effectiveness of their instruction by assessing their students’ learning. This course will examine several aspects of assessment including how to create good tests, how to ask effective questions and how to get your students to actively participate in their learning by asking questions themselves.
This course provides methods and techniques for managing students and class activities. We start by reviewing the steps instructors need to follow as they introduce a class to new students. We then discuss strategies to effectively deal with unfocused and challenging students. The course ends by describing common mistakes made by instructors and ways to avoid them.
This course covers the different ways individuals learn and apply new knowledge. We start by covering the steps the brain goes through as it processes new information, and how knowledge is stored and retrieved. We then discuss how intelligence is measured and how learners process information through the use of multiple intelligences. Moving from theory to practice, the course shows instructors how to use the learning needs of students to increase knowledge acquisition and retention. The course includes a number of easy to implement strategies to help students retain and use new content.
Studies reveal that as much as 85% of classroom communication is nonverbal. This course consists of eight entertaining modules that include audio tracks, animation and interactivity. Topics include the importance of nonverbal communication in the classroom, as well as our everyday lives. The modules describe the use of body language, effective vocal cues, proper appearance and the effective use of space (proxemics) and time (chronemics). A variety of support materials accompany the modules, including an assessment tool that instructors can use to evaluate their nonverbal skills.
While educators increasingly use technology in the lab setting, many don’t know where to start when trying to use it during didactic instruction. Furthermore, administrators have a hard time rolling out these initiatives. This course will go through the stages of a solid rollout plan to take advantage of available technologies. It will also discuss how to teach with technology as an enhancement to education, not a replacement. This course helps instructors, administrators and support staff to better understand how to use these tools.
Students (both veterans and non-veterans) with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are enrolling in career education in increasingly larger numbers. Instructors need to have a basic understanding of what PTSD is and how it impacts the lives of students. This course covers what PTSD is and the characteristics that students with PTSD may display. In addition, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is discussed as many students enrolling in career education have both PTSD and TBI. Instructional strategies to support the learning of students with PTSD and/or TBI will be discussed and examples given. Participants will also be given sources where they can gain additional insight into how to support the learning of students with PTSD and/or TBI.
Awareness about autism and the impact it has on the lives of those that have been diagnosed with it has grown greatly in the past few years. There has been an increase in enrollment of students who are on the autism spectrum in career education. This course will provide you with the characteristics of autism so that you will have an understanding of what autism is and how it impacts the learning of these students. Specific strategies for working with students who have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum will be provided, to enhance the engagement and learning success of students with autism.
As previously homogenous communities become more diverse and the population of English language learners in educational institutions increases, educators need to provide services that give such learners opportunities for academic success equal to those provided to native English speakers. This course provides information about teaching English language learners, including the legal and cultural considerations instructors must take into account and ways to show respect for cultural differences and diversity. The course will explore the factors affecting how English language learners learn, and will provide strategies and techniques for instruction and motivation. This course will also cover how best to assess students for content-area knowledge and language proficiency.
Instructional planning and delivery is undergoing dynamic changes with the availability of technology and expanded avenues through which information can be provided. Instructors need to be aware of how they can expand their instructional formats to include the latest technology and learning theories. This course provides information about the different forms of learning and how they can be implemented into classrooms and laboratories. Other topics covered in the course include different strategies for learning including transformative and cooperative methods as well as collaborative and experiential methods that help to engage learners.
When designing instruction for adult learners, it’s important to consider a host of factors. This course describes the characteristics and motivations of adult learners, and the best practices and techniques for teaching them. It discusses the different theories of adult development and adult learning, and their relationships to the classroom experience. In addition, this course examines brain-based teaching strategies, the theory of multiple intelligences, and how the different parts of the brain are affected by new learning.
This introductory course will provide you with the knowledge and skills to create successful online courses, whether for faculty-supported distance education delivery or as a supplement to classroom instruction. You will learn to design and develop online courses that have structural integrity and navigational simplicity with a focus on student-centered learning and intellectual interaction. The course covers various learning activities that are supported in an e-learning environment and describes the typical components of an online course. We will provide you with the media strategies and course design methodologies that will allow you to develop online courses in an effective and efficient manner.
Your degree of success as an online instructor relies heavily on several factors, among which are your level of preparedness before the date on which the course is launched; your ability to make a smooth transition into the roles and responsibilities associated with teaching in an online environment; and the effectiveness and efficiency with which you manage learners, instructional transactions embedded in the course as well as the learning environment. In this course, you will learn how to project your authority and presence into the e-learning environment, build a relationship with each learner, promote and nurture learner participation, provide informative and constructive feedback in a timely manner, minimize attrition, manage communications, manage unacceptable behavior and resolve disagreements.