Designing and Leading Professional Development

About this Program

The designing and leading professional development certificate is a 12-credit certificate program intended to introduce students to professional development efforts for adults with particular emphasis on adult learning theories, adults in group settings, learning design, and learning evaluation. Helping adults improve their abilities often occurs before they take a job, which is referred to as preparation, and while they hold a job, which is referred to as on-the-job learning. These latter efforts of on-the-job learning often come to life in the form of professional development, which can be defined as an intentionally structured set of learning activities and assessments geared towards improving a person’s abilities to do their job. For those working in educational organizations like schools, school districts, and higher education institutions, professional development can take many forms, such as a one-hour webinar to a multi-year, monthly series on how to implement a new program. Designing and leading professional development efforts are essential skills needed to enhance an organization’s workforce so that those people, in turn, are better positioned to effect positive change on the people they serve (e.g., students, clients, communities). This program’s purpose is intended to be a support system for helping students develop foundational knowledge, skills, and dispositions for designing and leading professional development efforts in organizations, especially educational organizations. This development will prepare students to be trained designers and facilitators of professional development efforts so that they can, themselves, provide high-quality professional development and help others do the same.