IMPACT Certificate

Description of and requirements to earn these certificates listed below

Fall 2024 Offerings

Tuesday, September 17 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Strategies for Mixing Up Your Teaching Approach to Foster Learning & Engagement

All teachers can find themselves falling into teaching patterns that feel comfortable, but that do not encourage students to connect strongly with subject matter. This seminar will examine specific techniques to vary your classroom teaching approach to help make your classes more interesting, multi modal, and connected to your subject matter.

Tuesday, October 8 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Promote & Foster Creativity & Critical Thinking in Your Classroom Through “Transfer
Exercises”

Encouraging students to participate and think creatively in the college classroom can be a challenge. This session will outline an activity that can be used in any content area to increase student participation, critical thinking, and creativity in a safe and encouraging classroom environment.

Friday, October 25 | 10:00am - 11:15am
Creating a Positive Classroom Environment that Encourages Students Engage in Subject Matter

In the college classroom we often think about content over classroom management. But the same techniques that encourage students to engage positively in a high school classroom also work in the higher education setting. This seminar will be a “classroom management” refresher that will refresh your understanding of the things that students need to feel safe and confident in your class while encouraging them to achieve in your specific subject area.

Thursday, November 14 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Creating Meaningful Discussions in Your Classroom

It has been posited that discussion, as a classroom teaching technique, is the most difficult pedagogical teaching tool to administer well. Research has shown that teachers can mistake quizzing and classroom conversation for true “discussion.” This seminar will examine discussion as a teaching tool, clarify what should not qualify as functional classroom discussion, and examine how the questions we use in our classroom can greatly affect how students think, react, and participate in our college classrooms.

Tuesday, December 3 | 12:30pm - 1:45pm
How You Ask Questions Determines How Students Think & Respond: Using Critical Thinking as a Teaching Tool in the College Classroom

Critical thinking can be defined as “the intellectually-disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” When we teach using techniques that primarily address recall skills our students learn how to remember things. When we teach them how to think and make critical thinking connections, we teach them how to learn and synthesize our subject matter. This session will examine practical ways to ask high-level questions in your classroom to help students connect concepts and create new ideas that reinforce academic understandings.

Workshop Flyer

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Certificate Descriptions and Requirements

IMPACT (Intentional and Meaningful Pedagogy to Achieve Classroom Transformations) Certificate

This certificate addresses the basic pedagogical elements that make high-impact practices so transformative and guides you to apply high-impact practices to a new course or an existing course that you want to improve. By completing the certificate, you will:

Strengthen your ability to apply pedagogical principles recommended as effective practice for decades
Understand several high-impact practices - particularly ones you may not have experienced as a student
Engage with like-minded colleagues who want to energize their teaching
Develop a plan for incorporating high-impact practices in your teaching
Document your professional development efforts as part of the faculty evaluation cycle

To complete the IMPACT certificate, take any 4 workshops tagged "IMPACT" on the FDC Newsletter emailed every Friday. Then submit a list of courses, along with a completed IMPACT Reflection. Answers must demostrate reflective thought and provide examples. Workshops and written reflection must be completed and submitted within a two year timeframe.

IMPACT2 (IMPACT SQUARED) Certificate*

The purpose of this certificate is to further develop knowledge of high-impact practices and to discuss types of application. Participants will continue on their path of learning by completing Learning Option 1 or Learning Option 2, and must also complete one of the written activities below.

*Participants must complete the IMPACT certificate before starting the IMPACT SQUARED certificate. Workshops completed in this certificate must be additional workshops completed after completing the IMPACT certificate.

Learning Option 1

3 additional workshops labeled IMPACT beyond those taken to complete the initial IMPACT certificate
1 Lunch and Learn labeled IMPACT
Completion of the Written Submission assignment described below

Learning Option 2

4 additional workshops labeled IMPACT beyond those taken to complete the initial IMPACT certificate
Completion of the Written Submission assignment described below

The Written Submission is required for all participants. After completing the other requirements, complete one of the following:

Submit a classroom assignment that has been created or changed, demonstrating the application of IMPACT material
Submit teaching methods (lecture, discussion, activity) that have been created or changed, demonstrating the application of IMPACT material
Submit an alternative creative idea demonstrating the application of IMPACT material (this must be pre-approved by the FDC in order to fulfill this requirement). To complete this, email fdc@fullerton.edu for approval of creative idea before starting your written submission.

Submit a list of courses, along with a completed Written Submission through the IMPACT Squared Submission Form. Written submissions will be reviewed and feedback will be sent back. To be awarded an IMPACT SQUARED certificate, your submissions must demonstrate reflective thought and details.

Workshops and Written Submission must be completed and submitted within a two year time frame.