Course Description
This course provides educators the opportunity to turn their travels into curriculum-building experiences that expand and embellish the instructional materials of their regular curriculum. Planning your travels around the love of your subject matter offers much that can be translated into amazing instructional materials that can be used to earn graduate level credit at University of the Pacific. Apply your learnings to supplement, enrich, and bolster your curriculum materials with real-life, first-hand information and insights. Simply provide a short description of your travel objectives and how you plan to create and implement your learning experiences into your program when you register, then keep a travel journal correlating the places and things you visit with your curriculum’s educational objectives. Upon your return, incorporate your experiences and learnings into your plans for teaching your course’s learning objectives and develop a slide presentation demonstrating the professional outcomes of your travel experiences. Submit your presentation, along with your travel journal and write-up, for evaluation.
About University of the Pacific
University of the Pacific, established in 1851, is California’s oldest private chartered university and is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).
The credits offered are post-baccalaureate, graded, graduate-level semester units of credit, provided directly through University of the Pacific, Benerd College. They are specifically designed to meet the needs of educators for Salary Advancement and Recertification. The credits/units are acceptable where local districts approve and applicable to state licensing where authorized. We always encourage you to check with your employer for acceptability of these credits/units. Course participants are responsible to determine acceptability of these credits for their intended use. Each graduate-level semester credit is equivalent to 15 hours of academic involvement.
Course Objectives
Upon successful mastery of this course, you will be able to:
- Evaluate your travel experiences to determine how they might translate into learning materials you can develop to use in your classroom.
- Identify specific areas of the curriculum to improve with information, materials, or activities developed from your travel experiences.
- Decide which learning objectives you would like to support with your travel experiences.
- Create a 25-30 slide PowerPoint or Google presentation to supplement your curriculum and enhance the students’ learning of your selected objectives, OR to demonstrate the professional outcomes of the inclusion of the materials from your travel experiences into your curriculum.
- Create materials (e.g., activities, projects, learning centers) based on your travel experiences to improve or develop your curriculum.
- Integrate the new materials into your lesson plans and/or presentations.
- Engage students in meaningful activities, based on your travel experiences, that support authentic learning experiences.
- Consider the effectiveness of the inclusion of the enrichment materials in helping students meet targeted learning goals.
- Speculate on how the activities served to enrich your curriculum.
- Reflect on the professional development experiences, specific to your future growth.