Frank Decker

Excellence in Online Teaching
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 06/14/2022
Excellence in Teaching
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 11/22/2022
Excellence in Campus Operations
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 05/25/2023
Excellence in Admissions
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 07/10/2023
Excellence in Leadership
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 07/19/2023
Excellence in Career Services
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 10/25/2023

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

Effective communication skills are essential in every aspect of life - especially in our work with students. This course provides a foundational understanding of all forms of communication and offers new techniques to improve admissions performance. In addition, a communication hierarchy provides participants with an advanced understanding of rapport building and connecting with today's students.
Success in helping students begins with “connecting” in a meaningful way. These connections are formed through our ability to understand generational experiences and preferences in communication. Additionally, a better understanding of ourselves helps us connect with students. This course explores how to work better together by using common collaborative principles and improving teamwork.
Ethical behavior in recruitment is essential to student and institutional success, and is a crucial component of a compliant institution. This course provides a framework to evaluate your current admissions interview process and offers new tools that allow for meaningful connections with today's students. An ethical enrollment process will help your students make their own best decisions and will increase the effectiveness of your admissions personnel.
The most successful admissions professionals are those who maintain a positive attitude and energy, but maintaining that positivity each and every day can be tough. This course focuses on the importance of understanding and building your personal attitude and energy to maximize your effectiveness. You will have the opportunity to assess your attitude and energy and manage these elements to maximize your performance. In this course, we will examine the fundamentals of attitude and energy and understand why they are so important to your success. In addition, we will utilize assessments to look at your current attitude and energy levels. Finally, we will review tips and best practices to enhance your energy and attitude output. Once you have completed the course and activities, you will be prepared and ready to best serve your students and school by maximizing your personal attitude and energy.
Today’s admissions professionals need expanded methods to adapt to where the prospective student is in the decision-making process. Whether you work with students online, face-to-face, or a little of both, adding variety will help you successfully connect with your students. In this course, you will discover ways to improve your connections with prospective students, best practices for inbound and outbound communication, how to address challenges in the moment, and methods for effective follow-up that improve your effectiveness as an admissions professional.
Questioning and listening are essential elements of communication—especially when working with students. This course provides an in-depth understanding of the purpose of skillful listening, and how this is necessary to be the most effective in your position. In addition, this course provides an in-depth understanding of the purpose and types of meaningful questions. You’ll be introduced to the fundamentals of both questioning and listening, as well as new tools and techniques to help you refine your questioning and listening skills.
This course is designed to give you a clear and practical understanding of the federal and state regulatory standards that govern the conduct of your organization and correspondingly underlay the performance of your job. The purpose of the course is not to train you to be a regulatory expert, but to provide the information you need to do or say the right thing when interacting with prospective students and students, as well as the consequences of doing or saying the wrong thing whether by mistake or with intent.
This is a private course intended for associates employed by this Institute.
This course provides faculty, staff, and administrators with an understanding of the legal mandates regarding equal access for students with disability. More importantly, it provides a practical framework to help institutional personnel know what to say and do in the context of their defined role and interactions with students with disabilities. Topics include the civil rights nature of applicable Federal law, definitional issues, the impact of disability on traditional education activities and pursuits, reasonable accommodations, and the unique responsibilities of faculty, staff, and administrators as prescribed by their position.
This course offers strategies to provide employment and job search skills training that enables students to seek jobs in the field for which they are trained. You'll learn how to offer comprehensive career services regardless of whether your career services department is staffed full- or part-time. The course provides strategies for an institution to set up a Career Services Department, enhance and run it, and measure results. It describes how a successful career services department can ensure that your students have the skills and self-confidence to succeed in the workplace. You'll learn techniques to increase placement rates and reach out to the community to meet and maintain relationships with hiring decision-makers.
In this course, you will be given tools to help your students find the job that's right for them, present themselves impressively on paper, and interview with ease. This course is designed so you can successfully support your students in four phases of their job search: doing a targeted job search, writing a powerful resume and cover letter, presenting professionally, and developing effective interview skills.
Military veterans represent a unique type of non-traditional student and must overcome distinctive challenges to reintegrate into the civilian workforce. With an influx of over one million veterans projected to enter higher education in the next several years, career services personnel must be prepared to provide the level of service these students need and deserve. This course helps career services practitioners understand the unique obstacles veterans face in the reintegration process, how to help them translate their military experience into civilian language and provides strategies & tools that can support veterans in becoming gainfully employed.
Personal branding is about communicating and presenting one’s unique promise of value. It’s an essential skill that must be learned, not only to facilitate seeking employment opportunities, but to help one navigate professional transitions throughout their working life. But for most job seekers, developing and communicating their brand is extremely challenging. Educators and workforce professionals must be empowered to guide their learners through a process that makes personal branding easier to understand and implement. This course describes a structured, practical approach to helping learners communicate who they are, what they can do, and how they can add value in the workplace, through offline and online methods. *The course contains multiple done-for-you resources for download and use with learners.
Help students ace the interview with successful tactics to showcase their qualities and make them the best fit for the job. A career management specialist will be able to master the appropriate actions for students to take before, during, and after the interview. These tactics can then be implemented in a career management class or during the preparations for prospective job interviews. The goal of this course is to help develop a better understanding of the topic and produce tangible resources to help implement plans, strategies, and ideas at your school. In addition to lecture videos, resource links, and assessments, you will be able to utilize Journal and Learning Activities, which will continue to be useful after successful completion of the course.
Although empowering learners to set and achieve career goals is the essence of career guidance and education, many professionals have little training on the science of motivation and goal setting. As career professionals, it is crucial that you understand these principles in order to effectively support learners who are navigating the complexities of career planning, including setting and achieving goals, maintaining motivation, and adapting to changing circumstances. Decades of research show that when goals are matched to your learners’ interests, values and abilities, their motivation and achievement are more likely to increase. This course provides essential knowledge of motivation and goal setting that equips professionals to help learners strive for career success. *The course contains multiple done-for-you tools and resources for download and use with learners.
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.
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 will inform you of how careful lesson planning can help to ensure increased student engagement. Proper lesson planning will enable you to teach effectively and efficiently, and ultimately help students meet learning objectives. The information in this course will provide the framework for instructional development enabling you to properly structure a detailed, well thought-out lesson plan.
This course provides an introduction to the concept and philosophy of active learning, and describes a variety of methods to help instructors "activ-ate" their class. The course includes active learning examples that utilize both critical and analytical thinking skills. We also identify the risks that may discourage instructors from using active learning strategies and offer suggestions for managing them. A three-step method is suggested for developing an active lesson, and a comprehensive model is offered as a guide for creative active learning strategies.
This course begins by identifying the two most significant issues that influence the motivation of adult students: security and autonomy. The course explains how increasing students' sense of security can enhance their motivation during instruction, questioning, activities, and evaluations. This is followed by a discussion of how motivation can be improved by enhancing students' sense of autonomy when making assignments, selecting instructional methods, implementing classroom procedures, and developing and planning evaluations. The course concludes by comparing and contrasting extrinsic and intrinsic motivators and by suggesting a variety of "miscellaneous motivators" for instructors to consider.
This course compares and contrasts four styles of classroom management. The course includes "virtual visits" to animated classrooms where participants observe four instructors who exhibit different management styles. The style that is preferred by most students is identified and described, and suggestions are offered on how instructors can modify their personal style to increase their effectiveness. A four-step model for developing successful classroom management strategies is presented and is followed by a discussion of a practical, behavioral approach to classroom management. Characteristics that foster good discipline in the educational institution and in the classroom are listed and explained, and tips are offered that can improve both institution-wide and classroom discipline. Finally, a number of scenarios involving common discipline problems are described.
Planning Effective and Efficient Instruction provides new and experienced instructors with practical ways to design and deliver learning experiences that establish an environment that facilitates learning. The course summarizes important academic concepts while providing specific strategies for planning lessons, reaching learners, asking questions and assessing student mastery of the course and program objectives.
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.
This course examines the various challenges veterans face when attempting to pursue courses of study following military engagements and service. While no instructor can possibly identify with every aspect of a veteran’s experience, it is possible to become more aware of some of the challenges facing veterans as they reintegrate into civilian life. This course also examines effective instructional strategies in design and delivery to facilitate the success of veterans in a post-secondary environment.
The classroom in an educational institution is often more than just chairs, books, and a white board. Frequently the learning takes place in a lab or shop environment, where the traditional rules of classroom management and teaching may not always apply. This course covers the instructional techniques necessary for the non-traditional classroom, including strategies for teaching to each student's individual learning style. In addition, this course describes strategies for assessing student progress. Safety guidelines and considerations for specific lab and shop environments are identified.
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.
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 the knowledge and skills to author, teach, assess, and revise successful online courses. You will learn to develop a course framework with consistent modules. Constructing an online community and a dynamic syllabus are important in helping you communicate with students. You will also learn how to develop an assessment plan including self- and peer-assessment as you progress through the course. No online course is complete without a comprehensive revision cycle. This course will walk you through the process of "closing the loop" to create a complete revision and improvement plan for your online course. We will provide you with ideas for student-centered learning, with activities and intellectual interactions using a variety of technology tools.
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 the knowledge to effectively evaluate student learning in an online environment. Technology tools play a vital role in the evaluation process and several are discussed in this module. Discussion will also be provided to help you further understand how to complete formative and summative assessments, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of objective and subjective assessments. Value-added assessments are also discussed in light of how they can be completed and provide feedback for course revision.
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 inform you about the purpose of rubrics and will provide you with the techniques to develop rubrics as an assessment tool for student performance, processes and products. This course will explore types of rubrics, the role rubrics play in assessment, as well as the use of rubrics in evaluating elements of your online course to ensure your course is truly student-centered.
This course will provide you with the basic foundations of assistive technology and its use in the online learning environment. As a greater number of students with disabilities are entering online education, this course will prepare online faculty to meet their unique needs. You will learn about the obligations and legal responsibilities under U.S. federal law. In addition you will explore ways of assisting students with disabilities to succeed in the online learning environment. We will help you identify the appropriate tools, introduce you to universal design, and provide strategies that can make your online course accessible to those with disabilities. Online accessibility is beneficial to all of your learners!
This course will provide you with strategies and techniques to help you reduce your workload in the online environment. The course begins with an overview of good principles for education and questions to consider prior to developing Workload Management Strategies (WLMS). This course also provides WLMS for teaching online, communicating and collaborating, and revising your online course.
This course will provide you with an overview of online instructors’ and learners’ personality traits. Participants will be provided with information about the traits themselves, as well as how to identify such traits, utilize them, and develop lessons to reach all students.
This course will explore the online learning landscape and how to ensure learner engagement remains high, even when working virtually. The course discusses various aspects of online education, as well as discussing techniques for both social and motivational forms of engagement and how to apply them appropriately in courses. The goal of this course is to help develop a better understanding of the topic and produce tangible resources to help implement plans, strategies, and ideas at your school. In addition to lecture videos, links to possible resources, and assessments, you will be able to utilize the Journal and Learning Activities. Take advantage of a method that best works for you.
Research shows that supportive working relationships between students and institutional personnel are vital to student retention. For online students, these relationships are especially essential in preventing a sense of isolation and detachment from their academic experience. Because interactions with online students are most likely to occur via phone and text-based methods, developing retention-supporting relationships can be challenging. This course teaches online communication strategies that foster connection and engagement with online learners. Participants will develop a deeper understanding of (a) retention and attrition research, (b) online learning, and (c) technology’s unique role in both the relationship-building process and the online student experience.
This course offers proven-successful techniques that ultimately prevent student loan delinquencies and defaults. Because there is not one miracle that reduces the chance of student loan defaults, this compilation of ideas and practices collectively greatly reduces those risks by giving ownership of the loan responsibilities to the students who benefit from them. By integrating effective borrower education and interaction from the day your students walk through your front door, your students will embrace the state of mind needed to give them lifetime accountability for their Federal Student Loans obligations.
This course is designed for the financial aid representative who is familiar with the financial aid process, and the campus manager seeking to learn more. The course provides a detailed review of the FAFSA to ISIR/SAR application process, concentrating especially on the technical aspects of the process beyond timeliness and accuracy. The importance of documenting verification and clearing comment codes will be explored, in addition to your role in using professional judgment.
With a seemingly endless stream of new laws and regulations, institutions have become burdened with ensuring they are compliant, while continuing to give great customer service to their students and families and all while achieving larger institutional goals. The role of the Financial Aid Office in compliance cannot be underestimated, but the Director of Financial Aid cannot ensure compliance in a vacuum. This course is designed to examine the fundamentals of law and regulation, and of the enforcement process. More importantly, this course provides tools for School Directors, Chief Financial Officers, Enrollment Managers, and Financial Aid staff to develop and build compliant practices that don’t interfere with effective operations, customer service or institutional goals.
This course explores the critical differences between management and leadership. Participants will be introduced to definitions and myths about each area as well as how management and leadership must coexist for an organization to operate effectively. Participants will explore their own management/leadership tendencies.
Not everyone is suited for, or desires, a leadership position. One of the first steps to being an effective leader is to understand the desire to lead in the first place. Participants will explore their motivation to lead and develop a deeper understanding of their leader style(s).
Beyond understanding the role of the leader, the ultimate effectiveness and impact of a leader takes into consideration the followers and the situation, too. This course defines leadership impact and explores the Interactional Framework for Leadership.
The higher education industry provides a wealth of opportunities and challenges for those seeking leadership positions. In this course, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the higher education sector and themselves. The importance of higher education institutions will be explored along with developing a personal leadership legacy.
Get ready to add a number of skills to your toolkit as you develop as a leader! This course focuses on increased self-awareness in communication styles and learning; developing deeper understanding through empathic listening; and motivating through innovation.
This course provides you with a framework to put your self-discovery and learning into a workable plan to further develop your leadership skills. A step-by-step process is offered to help you create a meaningful Personal Leadership Development Plan (PLDP) complete with the development of SMART Goals and advice from some of today's leaders in the higher education sector.
This course provides a synopsis of the essential tasks of leadership setting direction, aligning people, and motivating others. You will learn how to recognize the skills and characteristics of effective leaders, create an inspiring vision, and energize people to support and work toward your goals.
Focus is essential to effective teamwork. In this course, you learn how to diagnose and overcome common problems - such as poor communication and interpersonal conflict - that can impede team progress. You will also learn to take corrective measures to remove team problems and improve team performance.
This course provides sound advice on preparing and delivering presentations that command attention, persuade, and inspire. It includes rehearsal techniques as well as tips for creating and using more effective visuals. The course also addresses the importance of understanding your objectives and your audience to create a presentation with impact.
In this course, you will learn how to strengthen your coaching skills by using a four-step process to facilitate the professional growth of the employees you coach.
This course will show you how to set realistic goals, prioritize tasks, and track milestones to improve performance and morale.
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.
Educational institutions need to be aware of emerging employment opportunities in new and expanding fields if they are going to continue to attract students. Most licensing and accrediting agencies ask an institution for some form of feasibility study when submitting new program-add applications. The research involved in this step often requires proof of need for the program, number of anticipated job openings, and input from employers. This course outlines ways to collect data to make an effective decision and show regulatory agencies proof of employment opportunities. Step-by-step directions are included to assist institution staff in conducting effective research and preparation of curriculum to meet employer specifications.
This course shows you how to hire high-quality instructors and orient them to your institution. The skills also apply to hiring staff. It's easy to hire someone to do a job. But it can be difficult to hire the right person. You want instructors who are top notch. They represent your institution and interact with the most people at your campus and particularly your students. This course starts with how to determine exactly what type of people you need as your instructors. Then it shows you how to recruit and hire them. Once hired, you'll learn how to introduce them to the working environment at your institution. By the time you finish this course, you'll be recruiting, hiring, and orienting quality instructors. You'll see results in improved enrollments, student achievement, retention, and completion.
It is no longer news that predictive learning analytics are changing online classroom instruction. This course teaches current trends in locating, hiring, monitoring and retaining the best professionals that specialize in online instruction. More importantly, this course provides insights for using the new predictive analytic approaches to optimize management of online faculty. Generalized "best practices" are waning in favor of real-time monitoring for individualized qualitative and quantitative analyses. This real-time approach provides significantly increased student success and retention. Also addressed in the course is how to build a strong faculty management team, continuing faculty development recommendations and various business considerations.
Owners and directors of educational institutions are always looking for the magical ingredients to improve student retention. There are at least six easy-to-implement retention strategies that can make a difference in whether a student graduates or drops out. These include efficient admissions procedures, great orientation programs, effective mentoring, student friendly classroom involvement, fabulous graduations, and successful placement. Upon completion of this course, participants will have specific easy-to-implement retention strategies to put in place for every area of their institution.
This course is a collection of ideas and best practices drawn from the implementation of enrollment growth strategies at over 300 educational institutions nationwide. The course is based on a highly successful in-service training program offered by Dr. Joe Pace, Managing Partner of The Pacific Institute and includes video delivery of Pace's presentations. Filled with practical tips and suggestions, the course also discusses the application of current research results on human behavior and organizational culture to enhance student enrollment and retention. This is a unique course that will dramatically change your perspective on institutional effectiveness.