For the first time, faculty and professional development providers can send learners to self-guided, self-paced online CONNECT Courses designed for CEU or training credit for early childhood teachers. Through a new partnership with Quality Assist, Inc., these CONNECT Courses will integrate Project CONNECT’s innovative 5-Step Learning Cycle and rich subject matter with QA’s engaging and interactive online learning. The CONNECT Courses build early childhood teachers’ capacities to make evidence-based decisions by emphasizing problem solving and the importance of integrating multiple perspectives and sources of evidence.
The first CONNECT Course, “Tiered Instruction,” will be available in May, 2013. Seven total courses will be available by December, 2013.
FPG’s online CONNECT modules for university faculty and professional development providers have been popular across the country and around the world since FPG scientists developed them in 2010. These modules focus on research-based practices for teaching and intervening with children with high needs, especially those with disabilities, and have made CONNECT a timely and relevant resource for over 90,000 users in the last two years alone. Project CONNECT will continue to update its modules to support and complement QA’s new CONNECT Courses.
“We received lots of inquiries about offering CEU and training credit for CONNECT material,” says Pam Winton, FPG Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator of Project CONNECT. “The Quality Assist CONNECT Courses make this possible at a time when many administrators are looking at professional development in the areas we cover.”
The CONNECT Course topics mirror the CONNECT modules. In addition to “Tiered Instruction,” the subjects include: learning environments that promote high quality inclusion, transition practices that support children and families, communication that promotes collaboration between professionals and families, building trusting partnerships between professionals and families, purpose and benefits of assistive technologies, and dialogic reading.
Like FPG’s CONNECT modules, the new CONNECT Courses are not only rooted in a standards and evidence-based framework; the CONNECT Courses also are easily applicable to the needs of multiple audiences and contexts.
Each course will include a Knowledge Assessment, an Individualized Action Plan, Parent Notes, and Follow-up Conversation Starters for Directors. These courses will be available individually and through membership in Quality Assist’s Quorum program.
For more information, visit Project CONNECT: http://connect.fpg.unc.edu
Contact:
Dr. Pamela J. Winton, FPG Senior Scientist and Director of Outreach
Principal Investigator of CONNECT: The Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge
919-966-7180
FPG grants permission to publish this story in whole or in part.
Press Release Link: http://www.fpg.unc.edu/news/new-online-connect-courses-offer-ceu-and-training-credit