Gordon’s Graduate Education Program Partners with Innovative Group to Offer New Online Courses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 11, 2011

MEDIA CONTACT
Julie Lenocker
978.867.4322
[email protected]

WENHAM, MA— As education moves beyond the traditional classroom, some states now require a minimum of one online course for high school graduation. Others include “blended learning” in the curriculum, a mix of traditional teaching and computer mediated activities.

With such trends in online learning for all levels, Gordon College’s Graduate Education program has begun a new partnership with the Commonwealth Learning Online Institute (CLOI) and the Stratford Foundation, a provider of professional development for teachers since 1992, to offer a series of graduate level online reading courses based on the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. Each course is designed to provide an in-depth knowledge base of different components for reading using research-based resources, assessments, and strategies. Instruction in assessment administration and analysis as well as learning strategies to teach each skill are provided. Each of these six, seven-week courses is approved for three graduate credits and is offered throughout the 2011–2012 school year.

“Students reported that they found the readings, videos and activities through CLOI to be valuable,” said Dr. Janet Arndt, associate professor of education and director of graduate education at Gordon. “To read about the process is important but to see it in action is essential.”

Online graduate courses allow students who, for a variety of reasons cannot attend onsite classes, the availability of the same high quality courses. The student may ‘participate’ in the class when and where she or he chooses. Through networking within the course, the facilitator and the students communicate as often as three times a week. Ongoing structured communication is a graded requirement in many courses.

“After their first online course (with CLOI), some students felt more connected to the instructor and classmates than when sitting in a classroom,” Arndt said. “Online, you can’t sit in the back of the room and listen; you have to participate. They had to do the readings because they knew they had to participate on the discussion board. We believe this will be a valuable option for our graduate education students.”

For more information on course schedules, please click on www.gordon.edu/cloi.

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Gordon College is a multidenominational Christian college of the liberal arts and sciences on Boston’s North Shore, offering majors in 38 fields with graduate programs in education and music education. Gordon is nationally recognized for excellence in academics and in character building, and ranks as one of the nation’s top Christian colleges. www.gordon.edu

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