Blended Learning/Personalized Learning Graduate Certificate

The Graduate Certificate in Blended/Personalized Learning is designed to give practitioners hands-on knowledge around the following topics:

• BL/PL Foundations
• Data Literacy and Data-Driven Instruction
• Fostering Student Agency
• Creating Community Connections and Collaborations
• Creating Multiple Pathways to Mastery
• Promoting Competency-based learning

Graduates of this competency-based program will have significant experience in:

• Teaching in BL/PL contexts
• Using BL/PL pedagogical strategies
• Peer-coaching
• Critically using technology to enable better BL/PL learning and teaching

For more information about this program, please contact Dr. Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer at: 806-834-5132 or heather.greenhalgh-spencer@ttu.edu

Application How-To Guide

We have prepared a step-by-step guide to help you through the application process.

Download the How To Apply Guide

Course Descriptions

EDPL 5390: Foundations of Blended and Personalized Learning

This course lays the groundwork necessary for further skill development in PL/BL practices and mindsets.

Participants will discuss theories and frameworks that underpin PL/BL using the course participant's actual classroom context alongside relevant case studies. This course will prioritize the development of data-literacy skills to support planning for and implementation of personalized learning strategies.

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Unpack and apply the teacher competencies (i.e., the mindsets, knowledge, and skills) outlined in the TTU Personalized Learning Framework.
• Apply data-literacy strategies to plan data-driven instruction within the context of personalized learning classrooms.

EDPL 5391: Student Agency in Personalized Learning

This course will provide teachers with the ability to equip students to become self-empowered drivers of their own education. The course will also explore the changing roles of the teacher and student and how to leverage that shift to make learning more meaningful for students.

At the end of this course, participants will:

• Develop a deep understanding of student agency and the renegotiation of teaching and learning responsibilities required to enable student agency.
• Create student agency structures and processes for students to monitor their learning progress and
• Understand how to deploy strategies for assisting students in developing self regulation skills.

EDPL 5392: Teacher Routines for Using Data to Support PL

This course focuses on fostering student motivation and student ownership of learning through student data literacy. Participants in this course will use tools, self-assessments, and create scaffolds and materials that they can use throughout the year to build student data literacy within their classrooms.

EDPL 5393: Demonstration of Advanced Models of PL

This course focuses on the development of unit plans that are aligned with a focus on data-driven instruction, student agency, and student data literacy.

EDPL 5394: Personalized Learning Coaching and Critical Communities of Practice

This course focuses on implementation of the materials created during the summer, and coaching opportunities. Participants in course 5 will become coaches for students in course 1. Participants in this course will gain additional experience implementing BL/PL strategies (with peer and instructor review of implementation), and also gain on-the-ground coaching experience in BL/PL. Participants will emerge from this course (and the graduate certificate) prepared to make real changes in their schools as teacher-leaders.

Additional Information

• This is graduate-level coursework, which requires application to and enrollment in Texas Tech University. Upon completion of the one-year graduate certificate program, participants will receive 15 graduate credit hours. These hours will be on your official transcript should you apply to any future graduate programs; please only enroll if you can commit to the full year.
• Synchronous sessions on Wednesday evenings from 7-9pm CT will use Blackboard Collaborate—an online classroom platform. Note: there will be an optional 'information night' where participants will be able to tour the online classroom platform.
• All other graduate courses will likely have a synchronous session component, but the time of those synchronous sessions will be decided before the start to each course. Students are expected to fully participate in all synchronous sessions. However, courses will be taught in such a way that participants will be able to 'make-up' the synchronous sessions.
• The weekly workload for each course will be about 6 hours.
• There will be a final project as an assignment in each of these courses. The final projects will include items such as a 1-month plan, portfolio of resources, or various other tools teachers can take with them to use in the classroom.