Online courses in standards-based instruction and assessment with EFF and in teaching math and reading with EFF standards and the EFF Teaching/Learning Cycle are currently available. Additional courses are also under development. Contact the EFF Center for more information.

EFF Online Courses

EFF Orientation: An overview of the “Basics” of EFF
This is a 12-hour online course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to learn more about Equipped for the Future (EFF).

Objectives:

  • To assist you in building an understanding of EFF as a model of contextualized, student centered, standards-based instruction
  • To prepare you for possible further EFF-based professional development in specific content areas (such as reading, math, ESOL, EFF’s Preparing for Work)

EFF’s Use Math to Solve Problems – Part 1
This is a 14-16 hour online course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to learn more about using Equipped for the Future (EFF) standards, tools and principles to teach math.

Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to -

  • Use the EFF Use Math Standard and elements of the Performance Continuum with your students for planning, teaching and learning, and assessment
  • Adapt & create math activities that align with the EFF Use Math Standard, the Performance Continuum, and effective instructional principles
  • Increase your students’ interest  in, and use of, math in their everyday lives

 EFF’s Use Math to Solve Problems – Part 2
This is a 12-hour online course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to learn more about using Equipped for the Future (EFF) standards, tools and principles to teach math.

Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to -

  • Use effective teaching principles to plan, implement, and assess a teaching/learning activity using the EFF Standard Use Math to Solve Problems and Communicate
  • Have a range of tools for strengthening student’s problem-solving and decision-making skills including strategies for goal-setting, metacognition, planning, and self-assessment
  • Assist your students to connect and apply what they have learned to the GED, on the job, and in other real-life situations
  • Create a reflective journal documenting your own teaching and learning process during this course

EFF’s Read With Understanding (RWU) – Part 1
This is a 14-16 hour online course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to learn more about using Equipped for the Future (EFF) standards, tools and principles to teach reading.
Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to -

  • Understand how the RWU Standard describes the reading process
  • Introduce the RWU standard to your students in a meaningful way
  • Use the RWU Performance Continuum to learn about your students
  • Select text materials appropriate for your students
  • Try out a reading activity using the RWU standard

 EFF’s Read With Understanding (RWU) – Part 2 
This is a 14-16 hour online course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to learn more about using Equipped for the Future (EFF) standards, tools and principles to teach reading.

Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to -

  • Use the EFF Teaching/Learning Cycle as a guide for developing reading activities
  • Plan for ways to group students for instruction in RWU lessons
  • Find and use the online EFF Teaching/Learning Toolkit and other EFF tools/resources to develop, and test out with your students, real-life reading activities

EFF Online Mini Courses

Matching Purposes and Strategies (Skimming, Scanning, and Careful Reading): Workplace Reading 
The is a 6-8 hour mini-course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to explore ways to work with students to determine reading purpose and to select appropriate reading strategies for that purpose. Although work-based texts are used as examples, the principles apply to other text types.

This course is intended for teachers.  By the end of this course, we hope you can help students find ways to:

  • Set a purpose for reading by predicting or asking questions about what text will be about
  • Use three kinds of reading strategies– careful reading, skimming, and scanning- to meet the reading purpose
  • Choose and use purpose setting and strategy selection approaches as appropriate

Vocabulary: Teaching Word Meanings 
This is a 6-8 hour mini-course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to explore ways to work with students to build and assess their knowledge of word meanings.

This course is intended for teachers.  By the end of this course, we hope you will have some new concepts and tools to:

  • Select appropriate vocabulary for instruction
  • Introduce new word meanings to students
  • Support students in building their understandings of word meanings over time
  • Assess student understanding of word meanings
  • Regularly review word meanings with students

Using Text Structure and Graphic Organizers: Strategies to Enhance Reading Comprehension
This is a 6 hour online mini-course that is designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to explore strategies for increasing reading with understanding for their students.

This course is intended for teachers.  By the end of the course we hope you will be able to:

  • Recognize structures commonly used to organize expository text
  • Identify graphic organizers that assist in illustrating and analyzing particular text structures
  • Teach adult learners to Read With Understanding more effectively by:
    • Identifying text structures using signal words
    • Analyzing text structures using graphic organizers

Algebrafying Arithmetic: Developing Algebraic Reasoning with ALL Learners
This is a 6-hour mini-course designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to build a stronger foundation in mathematics for their students and themselves.

This course is intended for teachers.  By the end of this course we hope:

  • You will be comfortable introducing algebraic reasoning to adult learners at ALL educational levels
  • You will gain some simple strategies for ‘algebrafying’ arithmetic that you can use with your students, such as:
    • Explaining key number properties through real-life examples
    • Using in-out tables to explore patterns
    • Exploring number relationships via the ‘equals’ sign (=)

 Introduction to Statistics: An Introductory Look at Doing Statistics
This is a 6-8 hour online mini-course that is designed especially for adult education practitioners who wish to build a stronger foundation in mathematics for their students and themselves.

This course is intended for teachers.  By the end of the course we hope you will:

  • Be able to describe the process for “doing statistics”
  • Be comfortable introducing statistics to adult learners at ALL educational levels
  • Have strategies for teaching key elements statistics.
  • Be able to assist your students to be critical consumers of statistics