Course Overview

This course teaches you the benefits of productive struggle and methods for creating activities that support students through challenging tasks. You will learn what makes a good activity to support struggle, common hurdles you must address in your lessons, and simple strategies to support students throughout their tasks. You will analyze and learn about this topic through videos, articles, studies, and other resources. You will also design a comprehensive implementation plan for the classroom and an original resource that can be used to support implementation.

Learn More & Register

At a Glance

Approximately 15 hours
Access Time: 365 days
1 PDU
Graduate Level Professional Development Credit
$210
No additional materials required

Program Highlights

Online education

100% Online

All coursework delivered fully online, so you can balance work, life, and study.

Standards

Graduate-Level PD Credits

Earn graduate-level professional development credits to support salary advancement and professional growth. Check with your school or district for approval before enrolling.

Marketing

Fast, Flexible, and Ready When You Are

Enjoy instant access, self-paced study, and an easy-to-follow, template-based course format.

Course Objectives

  • Define struggle in the classroom setting
  • Analyze classroom activities that can help promote struggle
  • Evaluate strategies to support productive struggle within activities to ensure your student’s success
  • Critique, analyze, and summarize specific articles, resources, and studies related to struggle
  • Plan and build a Classroom Implementation Plan for immediate classroom use focused on designing lessons and activities that promote productive struggle
  • Build and describe the use of a resource aligned with the classroom implementation plan that supports a strategy you plan to use in your upcoming lesson

Course Topics

  • The video and article teach you how to design activities within the Zone of Proximal Development that support productive struggle as students learn and master concepts.
  • Completion of the content video, article reading (PDF format), and Model Teaching resource analysis and review.

  • Answer questions related to productive struggle
  • Questions to check for understanding of the course content. Quizzes are automatically scored and provide feedback on answer choice rationale.

  • The reflection requires you to plan for the use of the “try this task”: design an activity for productive struggle and a way to provide scaffolded support to your students.

  • You will read articles, watch videos, and review studies focused on the course concepts, to provide you with additional knowledge, insights, and ideas for implementation into your classroom
  • Watch the provided videos and read all provided articles, reports, and case studies. Then, write a summary and critical response for your chosen pieces of content. Considerations and criteria for crafting your response are provided in the course module. A Content Summaries Template
    will be provided to you, and you will upload your completed template. You will receive instructor feedback on your submission.

  • You will design a classroom resource aimed at supporting course concepts
  • Create your own resource to help you implement this course's concepts. A resource design planning template will be provided to guide you in creating your resource, but you will upload your own original resource that supports the implementation of course concepts in the classroom. You will receive instructor feedback on your submission.

  • You will design a plan to implement your knowledge of the course concepts into your future classroom lessons.
  • Build a thorough implementation plan that you can use to implement the ideas from this course into your classroom, including key action items and dates, resource design, and planning requirements. A Classroom Implementation Planning Template will be provided to help you plan the critical components to consider for implementation and to aid you in your final response. It will also include a reflection and summary of the ideas in the course. You will upload your completed template and provide an additional reflection response. You will receive instructor feedback on your submission.

Course Syllabus


View Course Syllabus

View All Professional Development for Educator Courses

Program Partner

This course is offered through University of Massachusetts Global’s School of Extended Education in partnership with Model Teaching.

What are Graduate-level Professional Development Credits?

Graduate-level professional development credits are not part of a degree program but instead are primarily used for professional advancement such as salary increment steps and recertification. Students should seek approval from appropriate district officials before enrolling in these courses.

Related Programs

All Programs
3 PDU
Teaching & Education

Applying Developmental Theories to Teaching Practice, Course

 Explore foundational developmental theories and how students learn, behave, and grow.
$380
Learn More
2 PDU
Teaching & Education

Efficient Classroom Processes, Course

 Learn six strategies for improving your learning environment and methods for supporting student learning.
$300
Learn More
3 PDU
Teaching & Education

Classroom Strategies that Work, Course

Develop classroom lessons using the nine research-based strategies that have been proven to be effective in improving student outcomes.
$270
Learn More

Featured Articles

All Articles