John Short

Excellence in Teaching
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 09/24/2026

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

This course will provide an overview of career readiness including information and activities that may be incorporated into your courses. This course, which forms Part I of a two-part series, provides details about four specific career readiness skills: critical thinking/problem solving, verbal/written communications, teamwork/collaboration, and information technology skills. Additional thoughts and resources will also be provided to allow you to consider multiple ways to assist students in developing these skills in your courses.
This course will provide a brief review of career readiness and provide additional skills to incorporate into your courses. This course is Part II of a two (2) part series of courses. Therefore, this course will provide details about four (4) additional specific career readiness skills. These skills include leadership, professionalism/work ethic, career management, and global/multicultural fluency. Further thoughts and resources will also be provided to allow instructors to consider additional ways to incorporate these skills into their courses.
This course prepares educators to effectively engage all learners in the Career and Technical Education (CTE) classroom through inclusive, hands-on, and industry-aligned instructional strategies. Participants will learn how to assess student learning preferences, interests, prior knowledge, and potential barriers to design responsive instruction. The course emphasizes active learning through project-based instruction, simulations, collaborative roles, and the integration of industry-standard technology. Strategies for differentiation, culturally responsive teaching, and flexible pacing are explored to support diverse learners. Participants will also examine methods for providing meaningful feedback, encouraging reflection, motivating students, and clearly connecting classroom instruction to career pathways, credentials, and workforce opportunities.
Virtual reality (VR) lessons can be implemented in all subject areas, and this course is designed to get teachers thinking about how it can be used in their classrooms. VR can be a nice addition to the teaching toolkit, but some resources, including hardware, will be needed. In this course we use the Meta Quest 2 headset by Oculus, but the results will be similar if different headsets are used. Various software applications will be shared that teachers can acquire for little or no cost.
Explore the dynamic and evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) with this course designed to cater to a range of learners from beginners to those with some prior knowledge. Starting with AI's history and core concepts and distinguishing it from machine learning and deep learning, the course sets a solid foundation. Delve into practical AI applications such as natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics, and understand the ethical dimensions and biases in AI. The course advances into complex topics like generative adversarial networks and the interplay of AI with big data and quantum computing. Finally, envision AI's future influence in critical sectors like health care and finance, and you will be equipped with knowledge and skills to confidently navigate the future of AI.
Positive psychology is the science of human flourishing and is leveraged to cultivate well-being for students, teachers, and staff in schools around the world. You'll be introduced to the tools of positive psychology to help you and your students thrive in the classroom and in life. This course is designed to help you understand the science of well-being and how to employ it for yourself and in educational settings to support well-being and academic achievement. The modules cover positive psychology's origins, and the research and application of the PERMA model, Character Strengths, and positive education.
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.
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 methodologies and examples to help instructors increase content retention and application by students in need of support. The course starts by covering the skills needed by instructors to be clear communicators. We then discuss ways instructors can become effective in monitoring students and using student groups as learning tools. The course concludes by covering techniques and strategies to instruct diverse learners, including learners with disabilities.
Retention is an issue, and what happens in the classroom is a critical factor influencing a student's decision to stay or go. The classroom environment may be hurting your students' view of the quality of your programs. In this course, you will learn tips and techniques to deal with environmental influences such as your role as the instructor, the classroom, the interactive activities, the support materials, and the sequence of instruction as well as other subtle influences. You will learn to view the environment from the student's perspective to increase your teaching effectiveness and student retention.
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.
This course will provide an overview of ChatGPT and how it might impact education. With an artificial intelligence (AI) language processing tool, there could be endless possibilities. However, like any other technology, its use in education is to be considered carefully, because learning will be affected. The course begins with an overview of the history of chatbots and artificial intelligence and goes on to discuss how to use ChatGPT, how teachers and students may use it, and the advantages and disadvantages of its use.
Your students are already using AI, and employers expect proficiency. Are you ready to guide them? This foundational course gives you a clear framework for working effectively with AI, helping you move from curious to confident. Rather than focusing on specific platforms that constantly evolve, you'll learn to navigate three fundamental ways humans interact with AI—Tell, Team, and Trust—while developing the three pillars of AI literacy that remain relevant as AI continues to advance. Through hands-on practice, you'll see how this framework connects to CTE fields. By the end, you'll have the language, understanding, and mindset to bring AI into your teaching thoughtfully, preparing students for today's AI-driven workplace while building your foundation for more specialized AI applications.
Your students will enter workplaces where artificial intelligence (AI) impacts hiring, daily tasks, and career advancement. Are you prepared to teach them not just how to use AI, but how to use it responsibly? This course builds directly on your AI Literacy Foundations knowledge, diving deep into the "Responsible Use" pillar. You'll develop practical skills for recognizing bias, ensuring fairness, and maintaining transparency when using AI. Through real-world scenarios, you'll learn to spot hidden bias, communicate AI use appropriately, and protect student data. By the end, you'll have a comprehensive ethical toolkit that guides every AI decision in your teaching and prepares students for responsible AI use in their careers. IMPORTANT: This course assumes foundational knowledge of AI concepts, the Tell-Team-Trust framework for AI interaction, and the three pillars of AI literacy. Without this foundation, you may find discussions of bias detection, ethical decision-making, and responsible AI practices difficult to apply in context. It is strongly recommended that you complete ED160: AI Literacy Foundations for CTE Educators before enrolling in this course.
Your students deserve lessons that reflect both industry relevance and innovative teaching. But curriculum development takes time you don’t have. This course shows you how to integrate AI into your planning and design workflow without sacrificing quality or professional standards. Building on your framework foundation and ethical toolkit, you’ll apply Tell and Team approaches to transform how you create lessons, activities, and assessments. You’ll learn to direct AI for efficient content creation, collaborate with AI for complex design challenges, and apply your ethics skills throughout the process. By the end, you’ll have an AI-integrated planning system that will help you save time creating the hands-on, industry-connected learning your students need. You’ll design better curriculum faster, with your expertise guiding every decision. IMPORTANT: This course assumes foundational knowledge of AI concepts, the Tell-Team-Trust framework for interaction, the three pillars of AI literacy, and ethical AI practices. It is strongly recommended that you complete ED160: AI Literacy Foundations for CTE Educators and ED161: AI Ethics, Bias, and Responsible Use before enrolling in this course.
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.
This course will provide you with basic information to teach in a virtual learning environment and understand the importance of organizing course content. You will learn about the important role technology tools play in teaching and organizing an online course. You will also learn the difference between synchronous and asynchronous learning. As the components of each are discussed, you will further identify appropriate methods, develop guidelines, organize content, and establish a pattern of teaching for each method.
This course will provide you with strategies and techniques to help prepare students for the online environment. To do so, you must also assess your strengths and weaknesses as an online instructor. As you help students assess their readiness for online learning, you are also preparing them for the expectations and realities of the online environment. By identifying students' strengths and weaknesses, you can provide guidance to help them achieve the learning outcomes. This course not only notes the necessary technical skills, it also discusses non-technical skills as well as techniques for successful learning and helping students develop their online persona.
This course will provide you with strategies and techniques to help use social networking in the online environment. It provides an overview of social networking, media hosting and sharing, microblogging and blogging. An introduction to each will be provided, and content development, policy, facilitation and assessment will all be discussed. Suggested activities will also be provided.
In this course, you will learn the difference between positive stress that enhances productivity and negative stress that breeds tension, lowers productivity, and undercuts job satisfaction. The course includes strategies for dealing with underlying causes of worry and stress, with tactical advice and coping mechanisms for immediate problem management.