High Impact Practices in Online Learning
High Impact Practices in Online Learning
The world has experienced an unprecedented shift to remote learning. Online instruction has become an essential tool for instructors to engage students and provide digitally supported learning opportunities. Etown's graduate certificate and concentration in High Impact Practices in Online Learning provides candidates with the opportunity to develop expertise to impact both personal and educational system practices for digital-age learning.
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Program Formats:

Credits Required: 12
Tuition:
- $525/Credit
- 10% Alumni Scholarship
National Standards for Quality Online Teaching
The following National Standards for Quality Online Teaching (Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance and Quality Matters, 2019) are supported by learning in this concentration/certificate program:
- Standard A: Professional Responsibilities: The online teacher demonstrates professional responsibilities in keeping with the best practices of online instruction
- Standard B: Digital Pedagogy: The online teacher supports learning and facilitates presence (teacher, social, and learner) with digital pedagogy
- Standard C: Community Building: The online teacher facilitates interactions and collaboration to build a supportive online community that fosters active learning
- Standard D: Learner Engagement: The online teacher promotes learner success through interactions with learners and other stakeholders and by facilitating meaningful learner engagement in learning activities.
- Standard E: Digital Citizenship: The online teacher models, guides, and encourages legal, ethical, and safe behavior related to technology use.
- Standard F: Diverse Instruction: The online teacher personalizes instruction based on the learner’s diverse academic, social, and emotional needs.
- Standard G: Assessment and Measurement: The online teacher creates and/or implements assessments in online learning environments in ways that ensure the validity and reliability of the instruments and procedures.
- Standard H: Instructional Design: The online teacher curates and creates instructional materials, tools, strategies, and resources to engage all learners and ensure achievement of academic goals
Curriculum and Instruction Program Outcomes
- Demonstrate knowledge of curriculum mapping, theory, models, and pedagogical approaches.
- Apply these models, theories, and pedagogical approaches in their own practice, across sociocultural contexts, and in diverse learning environments.
- Display commitment and leadership for building learning communities through collaborative strategies and among key stakeholders, including students, parents, educators, and staff.
- Use and apply formal and informal assessment strategies to promote and evaluate the continual intellectual, social-emotional, and personal development of all learners.
- Use and apply instructional technologies to promote and evaluate the continual intellectual, social-emotional, and personal development of all learners.
- Design and conduct action research that explores learning strategies related to classroom, community, or cross-disciplinary issues.
This certificate is endorsed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), resulting in the awarding of the Online Instruction Program PK-12 endorsement.
HIPOL
Requirements
HIPOL Course Descriptions
The course explores several themes determined to be at the heart of instruction that accelerates students’ learning. Teacher clarity and feedback, as well as refined instructional methods increase the impact of instruction in terms of progress and achievement. In addition, dispositions and beliefs drive the teacher’s ability to be an agent of change. Regardless of the learning environment, these themes endure and inform instructor practices to improve readiness and students’ capacity to learn.
This course examines how to promote online communication, community building, conflict resolution, and teacher leadership in an online environment to create powerful learning spaces.
As a method to define student success and shared aspiration, a profile of a graduate is locally developed. It is globally positioned as the unwavering definition of the purpose and transformation of school system’s goals and future growth. It specifies a core set of learning goals including cognitive, personal and interpersonal competencies that should be mastered by the student before graduation. This course provides the opportunity to explore core online learning competencies essential to develop learner agency and the capacity for collaboration and global citizenship in life, work, and society.
How can we create learning opportunities for students that are not “one-size-fits-all” while leveraging technological innovations? Inclusive Innovations leverages Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to create flexible, engaging and effective eLearning solutions—whether through online, face-to-face, or blended instruction. This course is project-oriented that invites participants to identify and evaluate eLearning courses for accessible pedagogy and approaches.
This course employs and models innovative approaches to instructional design so that participants can further develop skills and mindsets that:
· Engage participants in developing empathy for the audiences for which they are designing and building.
· Encourage participants to prototype rapidly and pivot in response to initial evaluations and feedback.
· Requires participants to assume a beginner’s mindset to evaluate from the perspective of a new user or audience.
This course examines how to use the Community of Inquiry framework in virtual instructional environments to humanize online learning. By fostering academic and social connections, teachers can build empathy, personalize learning and increase student motivation.
When students feel a connection to their instructor and the larger classroom community they are more motivated to learn, feel satisfied with their work, and achieve success. This course has been designed to help teachers develop skills to keep the human element in online environments. Leveraging digital tools to create community and foster academic and social connections will not only elevate teaching and learning strategies but also enhance course design with emerging technologies. To humanize online instruction, instructors must critically analyze their teaching philosophy as it relates to online learning, understand how to use their teacher presence to personalize the learning environment, and leverage the use of emerging technologies and course design options that create equity and high impact interactions
SAMPLE COURSE SEQUENCE:
Application Requirements
Admissions Requirements
To be eligible to apply to a graduate certificate, you must:
- have official transcripts conferring a baccalaureate degree from a regionally accredited college or university.
- have an undergraduate grade point average of 3.0 or higher (waivers can be granted based on professional work experience and other factors)
- have a minimum of three years of professional leadership/management experience
- have time to devote to your coursework; in an accelerated program, time spent outside of class is considerable
Application Process
Please feel free to contact or meet with our admissions team at any point during the application process. Our admissions counselors are not only a great resource to guide you through the process and answer questions, they are skilled at helping our applicants find the best program and options to help them reach their goals!
How to Apply: Complete the graduate application process via the online portal which will also include:
- Submitting a $25 nonrefundable application fee (Waived for Elizabethtown College graduates).
- Uploading your current resume.
- Requesting official transcripts from all undergraduate institutions attended.
- Uploading a 1-2 page essay addressing your:
- motivation for pursuing the graduate certificate
- statement of professional goals
- goals for the application of the graduate certificate to your professional life
Our experienced Admissions staff is here to help. Fill out a brief contact form and one of our counselors will reach out to guide you on your way.

