Master of Education
| Aspen's 36-credit Master of Education (M.Ed.) provides opportunities for educators to improve their teaching skills through mastery of the latest educational theory. The program is flexible, to meet the needs of a variety of educators. |
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Aspen University welcomes bachelor's degree holders who have experience in primary and secondary school settings, vocational-technical schools, and universities. We also welcome bachelor's degree holders who train or teach in other areas, such as business and industry.
M.Ed. Degree Completion Requirements:
36 Total semester credits (12 Courses- 3 credits each)
Two Proctored Exams
Basic Core Courses (12 credits)
700-Integrating Technologies across the Curriculum
705-Research on Effective Teaching
710-Multidisciplinary Foundations of Education
799-Capstone Project (Prerequisite: All other courses in the program)
Advanced Core Courses (select four - 12 credits)
720-The Instructional Role of Assessment
725 Classroom Environments and Management
730-Curriculum Development, Implementation and Evaluation
735 Current Issues and Challenges in Education
740-Ethics and Educational Law
745 Global Education and World Citizenry
Three Concentrations
(Students may elect two concentrations. One would serve to satisfy the advanced core requirement.)
1. Educational Technology
750 Introduction to Online Learning and Internet Research
751 Instructional Design
752 Multimedia for Educators
753 The Wired School: Emerging Technologies
2. Curriculum Development and Outcomes Assessment
760 Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement
761 Curriculum Mapping and Assessment Data
762 Schools and Leadership
763 Academic Portfolios
3. Transformational Leadership
780 Leadership Basics
781 Educational Innovation
782 Shaping School and Community Cultures
783 Communicating and Framing Leadership Issues and Decisions
Course Descriptions:
700-Integrating Technologies across the Curriculum
This course provides practical skills to meaningfully incorporate technology into the classroom in order to enhance students' understanding of the curriculum. Students will create a portfolio; examine internet resources and evaluate educational software.
705-Research on Effective Teaching
This course is a research based course that will require students to survey the research literature on effective teaching and schools. Research in a particular area, on-site observations in a school setting, and post-observation and analysis of observed teaching and learning will be examined and compared to what the literature reveals is "best practices".
710-Multidisciplinary Foundations of Education
This course will give students an opportunity to study the dynamic and continuing impact of social, political, and economic forces on American education. Students will be introduced to the historical evolution of the public schools to help them identify important social issues that can have an impact on the educational system. Students will be required to complete a major research paper.
720-The Instructional Role of Assessment
This course introduces and demystifies the entire testing and assessment process. Equally as important, it not only links testing and teaching, but also shows in specific ways tests can be designed to support instruction. Content standards are emphasized to the point of meeting and aligning with school and district standards and outcomes. Given the current climate of intense high stakes testing mandated by NCLB and various state and district assessments, the course may bring light not more heat to what educators increasingly are facing. Above all, testing can be used to restore the control and direction of outcomes.
725-Classroom Environments and Management: Differentiated, Democratic and Collaborative Education
Two current forces are converging to invest classroom management with greater importance. The first is the increasing number and levels of disruptive student behaviors occurring in the classroom. The second is pressure of high stakes testing which has resulted in student disappointments, being left back, and failures to graduate. What happily can be done will be addressed in this survey and examination of classroom management techniques.
730-Curriculum Development, Implementation and Evaluation
Cognitive performance is brain-wired. Learning pathways have been identified for virtually all thinking and memorizing processes. These physiological and electrical links now supplement and bring greater precision to the standard developmental models of Piaget and others. The next step is to tap this cognitive science in the classroom and to develop lesson plans and modes that are brain-compatible and thus more effective which is the goal of this course.
735-Current Issues and Challenges in Education
The field of education like many others in transition stirs often strong, controversial, and opposing views. The goal of this course is to provide a forum for the expression of such views. As such, the choice of spokesperson may vary over time to reflect both changing issues and points of view. The focus currently is on Gerald Bracey who has been called variously a contrarian, a skeptic's joy, a modern Don Quixote.
740-Ethics and Educational Law
Ethics and Educational Law will deal with the legal obligations and ethical responsibilities of educators. The course will present an overview of the general topics most commonly experienced by educators including student privacy, gender and disability law, constitutional rulings on prayer and religious expression, discipline, and reporting issues. The rights revolution of the 1960's and 1970's and associated changes in our educational systems will be examined. Legal problems associated with the use of technology will be examined in light of the extensive use of computers in both public and private schools. The rights of teachers, students, and school administrators will be discussed within the context of new Supreme Court Rulings.
745-Global Education and World Citizenry
The use of technology has changed the way that information is distributed to include all corners of the globe. With the spread of information people everywhere are exposed to common ideas and concepts. The individual student's concept of self must now include a vision of himself as a citizen of the world. What individuals learn must also reflect an understanding of those concepts, ideas, and knowledge that world citizens must hold in common. As these commonalities are identified they will, in turn, impact our educational systems and their content. This course will look at the current perspectives on world citizenry and present topics for inclusion in global education.
750-Introduction to Online Learning and Internet Research
This course will provide students with an opportunity to learn about online learning, teaching, integration, and research issues. Participants will learn to use online databases with success, develop critical thinking skills, and to formulate effective search strategies in order to research and document valuable and current resources. Students will exploit a variety of Internet- and Web-based discussion and information-sharing tools. Students will integrate best practices of content authentication and validation into their research techniques. Through a course-long research project on a global issue, participants will examine various strategies for locating, evaluating, citing, and applying information resources in the research process. Information policy issues such as censorship, privacy, and freedom of information will be explored throughout the process.
751-Instructional Design
This course addresses ways instruction can best be structured to facilitate effective, performance-enhancing learning. Students will examine a wide range of delivery vehicles focusing on the role key learning theories and principles have played in the development, instructional design and deployment of content. Students will examine the application of learning theories to the design of synchronous and asynchronous e-learning experiences, and the role of collaboration within such environments. Students will gain a blueprint for designing well-structured and compelling learning experiences. Students will examine best practices for when and how to use different media and delivery methods, and how to combine e-learning to enhance traditional instructional methods.
752-Multimedia for Educators
This course focuses on the integration of multimedia and hypermedia-based content within classroom curriculum and instruction. Students will explore all aspects of integrating media technologies with curriculum, instruction, and assessment of student learning. The course will examine the wide range of multimedia products available for a wide range of disciplines and will provide students with selection criteria that will help students identify the best content. Students will produce a portfolio throughout the course based on best practices for the integration of multimedia content within Internet-net based courses as well as traditional classroom-based instruction. Students will focus on the selection of multiple media content for different learning activities and will construct lesson plans that integrate multiple-media content into the curriculum. Finally, students will create a sample multimedia lesson.
753-The Wired School: Emerging Technologies
Through this course, students explore state-of-the-art and emerging technologies in information processing (software development, hardware, and computer networking strategies) appropriate for use in an educational environment. Students will examine ways to integrate into the traditional classroom tools frequently used in distance-learning environments (discussion boards, synchronous chats, and application sharing). Students will learn best practices for leveraging technology for instruction and class administration. Students will learn techniques and metrics managers can use to evaluate a new technology's benefits and potential pitfalls and tools to estimate the potential return on a technology investment. Students will establish techniques for staying current with new technologies in today's age of dynamic innovations.
760-Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement
The foundation for academic accomplishment lies in understanding the student in the classroom setting; how the student learns and how the student is prepared to learn. The purpose of this course is to provide a comprehensive overview of the linkage between classroom instruction, the socio-emotional level of students, and planning and conducting of evaluations of achievement.
761-Curriculum Mapping and Assessment Data
Assessment is as important as curriculum, but the two have to work in concert. With the emphasis on outcomes assessment, and validation of learning outcomes, educators are challenged to establish that curriculum is applicable to the subject, and that outcomes can be validated. This course examines the process of mapping curriculum and how this provides the confirmation that what is being assessed, is what has been taught. The understanding of the linkage between these concepts provides the roadmap for analyzing student work.
762-Schools and Leadership
The field of Education is constantly bombarded with new and different theories on learning, on objectives, and on predicting future direction. The ability to bring diverse concepts into a manageable perspective requires the ability to understand the components of leadership. The focus of this course is to recognize what constitutes leadership in education, and to comprehend the factors that determine its future direction.
763-Academic Portfolios
Outcomes assessment is subject to the multiple methods of capturing and displaying student data, but increasingly, the Portfolio is found to be the device of choice, to house, arrange, evaluate, and display student work. By merging the techniques of portfolio development with relevant technology, it is possible to showcase accomplishment, while subjecting this same work to a variety of assessment strategies. This course introduces the concept of the portfolio, and moves that concept through to a tangible tool that can be manipulated to address standards, assessment objectives, checklists, and rubrics, to demonstrate student progress and outcomes.
780-Leadership Basics
The perennial fascination with leadership has acquired new urgency in the fields of business and education. Global competition has increased the need for higher levels of productivity and innovation. National test standards and accountability have raised the bar of school and educators' performance levels. In both instances, boards of directors and school boards look to leaders to provide solutions. In education, however, the problem is compounded by overburdening additional administrative layers and hamstringing of supervisory options. Perhaps, more than ever before the old debate between being a manager or a leader applies now to education. Nevertheless, leaders do emerge and bring about major transformations. How and why that happily still happens is the subject of this course.
781-Educational Innovation
In order to be a transformational leader, one who is competent as an agent of change, one must first be transformed as an educator and person. Leaders must format creative ways to deliver education and become prepared to take ownership as a leader. Teachers are being given the opportunity to create and work in new educational environments. These opportunities increase the responsibility level of teachers and also lead to new skills necessary for leadership.
Participants will experience personal reflection about who they are, why they are educators, what they hope to accomplish, and begin setting new professional goals as teacher-leaders. Participants also will read and discuss the history of American education reform in order to create a personal and professional philosophy for leadership and reform. Readings, reflection, discussions, and experiences will be used to help participants work through their rationale and begin developing a personal philosophy and the skills to become a transformational leader.
782-Shaping School and Community Cultures
Change in a culture, in education as in other organizations, is a complex undertaking. Leadership for change, therefore, is complex as well. What is necessary for transformational change is recognition that leadership is key to large-scale improvements. Transformational changes cannot take place without considering the importance of culture in the environment. Far too much emphasis is placed on reforming schools from the outside via policies and mandates. It is time to consider shaping school culture from within. Teacher-leaders, by understanding their moral purpose, how change takes place, how to build relationships, how to build knowledge as an organization, and make coherence of that knowledge, can create a positive, caring, and intellectually challenging culture. This course will offer insights and examples of how to build such a culture.
783-Communicating and Framing Leadership Issues and Decisions
With increased empowerment of employees in general and leadership sharing in particular, leading and managing have increasingly become a communication activity. In addition, as mangers become leaders and employees become managers, that process is less unilateral and more two-way, less restricted to one sector and crossing over into many. As a result maintaining vision, mission and meaning requires greater attention to and finesse with interpersonal and interdivisional communications. Indeed, increasingly how one communicates is how one leads and manages.
Leadership is in large part a language game. Although most leaders spend nearly 70 percent of their time communicating, they pay relatively little attention to language as a tool of leadership and influence. The goal of this course is to treat leaders as managers of the meanings of their world. In particular, the course introduces leaders to the skill of framing which is not in-born but can be taught. Based on extensive research and questionnaires, framing situations, strategies and tools can be identified, analyzed and communicated. The net result is leadership development which improves not only the way decisions are made, but also the way they are conveyed and ultimately implemented.
799-Capstone Project
The capstone project/research course allows students to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in their courses to their school or district environment. This project is completely individualized; students are encouraged to select projects that are of particular interest to them and that will result in professional growth and benefit their school or district.
Due to the extensive evaluation process, and the quantity of work and research involved, the Capstone course has a time limit of 6 months.
(Prerequisite: All courses in the program)
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