In a world with declining values, it is important to ensure all students access moral education. Course content alone will do little if students lack respect or responsibility. This session will share how to integrate moral education into online knowledge and skill based courses to educate the whole.
Does learning content knowledge alone provide a guarantee that a student will succeed? Have you ever met a student that was extremely intelligent, but lacked the ability to be successful in their future endeavors? In your educational experience, have you met a student that was gifted with an abundance of learning potential, but who fell short in having the ability to properly work within society bounds; hindering their ability to reach that full potential?
It has become apparent in today’s world of education that it is not enough to simply teach content knowledge to students. We must look at the student in their entirety, as the whole child. This means that every course designed or taught must address character attributes that will better equip students to thrive in societal norms along with solid content. Whole child learning is required in many states similarly to meeting state standards. It is now an essential piece of course design! Teaching these attributes in a traditional brick and mortar setting is not necessarily easy but has an advantage over an online setting. Traditional classroom teaching can provide opportunities for class discussion and other interactive activities that allow educators to dive into these topics. However, this is more challenging to accomplish in an online setting, especially when the students are asynchronous.
This session will cover how our institution has worked to develop model courses designed to integrate not only solid content learning, but also teach our students character attributes and 21stcentury skills. We will share with you how we have developed this integration model that seamlessly provides whole child education into asynchronous online learning courses of any content area. During our session we will spend the first half presenting these integration strategies in a variety of course content areas. Provide templates and examples of not only the various attributes we have developed, but also how we have templatized the integration to create consistency in courses. Attendees will then engage with colleagues of similar content areas to discuss the strategies presented. During this portion, presenters will be engaging with groups allowing for time to ask questions. Remaining time will then be provided to practice the implementation of these integration strategies in their own content or design courses. It is the goal of the session that all attendees will take with them a list of attributes as well as an example lesson that can be a resource for future design and course building.