Course Description
Students today are inundated with news from the world around them. This course, designed for the educator who wants to capitalize on student awareness of global events, provides the opportunity to enrich today’s curriculum with knowledge gained from their own firsthand experience. What better way to teach than to incorporate travel experiences to promote greater understanding of the needs and drivers behind these occurrences? Travel to the places you want to go, and then review your curriculum objectives to determine specific student learning objectives your travel learnings can support. Next, develop activities, projects, or materials that will enrich your curriculum while scaffolding student learning of the objectives and support your curriculum goals. After you have implemented the activities directly into the learning process of your students, submit a slide presentation demonstrating the professional outcomes of your travel experience, along with your travel journal and a write-up describing either the professional application of the materials or how they were used in the classroom, for evaluation.
Integrate your travel study experiences into your educational setting. Opportunities are available across all teaching grade levels, disciplines, and subjects or topics. Designed for busy teachers like you, you will get up to 6 months to complete your coursework requirements, and extensions are always granted upon request.
Overview of Requirements
1. Define your travel objective(s): When registering for this course option, you will be required to provide a short description of your travel objectives, and how you plan to create and implement your learning experiences into your program. You may also utilize previous travel experiences for this course option as long as the materials developed are relevant to your curriculum or programs.
2. Create a Travel Journal with times, academic points of interest, and activities relating to your travel experiences and objectives. Your travel journal will document the effort and time that you dedicate to the process of completing your coursework requirements and learning objectives.
Whether you spend time brainstorming, researching, reading, typing, writing, watching educational videos and films for ideas, constructing visuals, putting together new Powerpoint Presentations or rubrics, you are able to document all the professional time you have invested amplifying and enriching your professional needs.
3. Develop a 25-30 slide PowerPoint or Google presentation (per credit) to demonstrate the professional outcomes of your travel experience, and implement what you have learned directly into the learning process of your students.
1 credit = 30 Slides
2 credits = 60 Slides
3 credits = 90 Slides
4. Complete a 1-2 page write-up: A minimum one to two page write-up describing utilization and/or professional application of material developed.
*Additional course guidelines, formatting requirements, and information will be provided upon course enrollment.
Completed courses are letter graded and will appear on an official transcript from University of the Pacific, Benerd College. An Official Transcript with your final course grade(s) is available from Pacific upon successful completion of coursework. The course ending date that will appear on your transcript will reflect the date on which your completed coursework was reviewed and graded.
Teacher Friendly Course
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:
- Explore your curriculum for areas to enrich with activities, projects, or materials.
- Review your travel experiences for connections between your curriculum objectives and the activities and learnings you encountered on your journey.
- Analyze your curriculum objectives to identify specific areas of the curriculum to enrich (i.e., support, enhance, broaden) with information, materials, or activities from your travel experiences.
- Select the learning objectives for which you would like to develop enrichment activities.
- Develop an activity or activities specific to the support of your selected objectives, based on your travel experiences.
- Integrate the new activities into your lesson plans and/or presentations.
- Engage students in meaningful activities, based on your travel experiences, that enhance their learnings and support authentic learning 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.
- Consider the effectiveness of the activities you have created in (a) enriching your curriculum and (b) helping students meet targeted learning goals.
- Consider how the activities you created served to enrich your curriculum.
- Reflect on the professional development experiences, specific to your future growth.
Course Includes
- 4 Sections