Master’s Degree Course Descriptions
The master’s degree program is comprised of 10 online courses and can be completed in 1 year.

Course 1: Principles of Strengths-Based Education (3 credits)
Great teachers understand that individuals learn best when they leverage their own unique talents to impact positive performance. This course will help educators develop and demonstrate an understanding of the psychology and change principles that enhance an individual’s capacity for extraordinary performance. Together, we will explore their unique and recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior, and how these contribute to their teaching style, philosophy, and approach to student development. These insights will serve as a gateway to recognizing strengths in others. Each person will develop solutions to everyday education problems and work toward innovations that maximize talent and create the greatest potential for individual achievement. Educators will explore proven approaches to integrating strengths-based development in a variety of environments and critique the efficacy of the programs.

Course 2: Hope, Engagement, & Well-being of America’s Students (3 credits)
Gallup measures the hope, engagement, and wellbeing of America’s students, from elementary school through college, to give students a voice. We have learned that about half of students are hopeful, half are engaged, and two-thirds have high levels of wellbeing. Educators will learn how hope drives student attendance, GPA, and retention. They will also discover how engagement relates to performance on high-stakes tests, how wellbeing is a factor of rather than a product of success, and how strengths development relates to Gallup Student Poll findings. Theories that undergird hope, engagement, and wellbeing will be reviewed and implications of the poll results will be discussed in the context of best practices on campuses. Educators will be asked to create their own school-specific efforts to drive change in poll numbers.

Course 3: Strengths Advising, Coaching, & Careers (3 credits)
Educators understand that applying what they learned is a key component in meaningful education. This course will help educators focus on advising students by creating student action plans while integrating strengths philosophy into their curriculum. As an educator, how can you leverage your own talents to bring out and build upon the talents of your students or staff? In this course, educators will dive deeper into understanding a person’s 34 themes of talent and the best practices for taking an individual through strengths discovery and development.

Course 4: Strengths Analysis, Application, & Impact Planning (3 credits)
This course will help educators analyze, integrate, and synthesize the theory and practice they have learned into this culminating experience. Each educator will accumulate and report 100 strengths feedback sessions with students and parents. Educators will share the results of their learning accomplishments with their peers and apply those same results to their respective disciplines. The practicum involves an analysis and presentation of assumptions, actions taken, results witnessed, outcomes achieved, and metrics affected throughout the sequence.

Course 5: Data-Driven School Management (3 credits)
This course shifts from an individual focus to how students work together in a classroom and how staff members work together in a school. Educators will learn the importance of measurement in academic achievement through sound statistical research techniques. Principles and theories of positive psychology and behavioral economics are presented to increase knowledge and drive results through awareness and statistical measurement techniques. This course prompts and facilitates further research in team strengths, development, and performance. How Full Is Your Bucket, Vital Friends, and Health Psychology form the foundation for this course.

Course 6: Positive Psychology (3 credits)
Positive psychology is the rigorous study of what is right and positive about people and institutions. Positive psychologists call for as much focus on strengths as on weaknesses and as much attention on positive emotions as negative emotions. They want to see as much interest devoted to building the best things in life as in repairing the worst and as much effort devoted to promoting the fulfillment of lives of healthy people as to healing the wounds of the suffering. This course will first present educators with an introduction to the core assumptions and research findings associated with strengths and positive emotions, then examine the role of positive expectations and positive experiences in daily living.

Course 7: Strengths-Based Leadership (3 credits)
Research shows that there is no one characteristic that all great educators possess. Effective educators are not well-rounded at all, but rather they are aware of their unique talents and use them to their best advantage. To help educators better leverage their talents, this course provides an in-depth understanding of the principles of being an effective strengths-based leader. Educators will explore leadership theory with their own strengths as the lens to enhance self-awareness and leadership effectiveness as well as the impact on students and their schools. The course will highlight successful leaders and identify the four basic needs that followers seek from their leaders. Educators will develop an individual leadership plan that will incorporate their investment in their strengths by giving them a new road map for leading students toward a better future.

Course 8: Student Achievement & Retention Performance (3 credits)
Keeping students engaged so they stay in school and actively participate in learning is critical. Making students aware of their talents can boost their sense of achievement along with their likelihood to stay in school. This course provides insight on how educators can focus on crucial success factors that drive student engagement and increase student retention. Educators study best practices for student engagement and teacher effectiveness, linking both strategies to student achievement.

Course 9: Individual Talent Analysis (3 credits)
Being successful in a role starts with talent. Educators will learn the value of hiring for talent and how to analyze unique talents in a job-fit analysis. In addition, the concepts of advanced theme dynamics will help educators understand how individual strengths play a vital role in student success. Through this understanding, educators will be equipped to develop strengths-based student plans.

Course 10: Master’s Capstone: Community & School Engagement (3 credits)
Based on leadership research, great educators have the capacity to make sense of an experience and to help others do so as well. Throughout this curriculum, educators will be challenged to integrate all their learning and apply it within their environment. They will identify an organizational initiative that will positively affect both school and community engagement. Over the course of the program, educators will lead and implement the initiatives to impact their respective community and school engagement. This gives them the opportunity to apply the learning in a real-life laboratory (not a hypothetical case study). In so doing, the community and school sees and benefits from their organizational impact initiative.

Coaching: In addition to studying with world-class faculty, each participant in the master’s degree program will work with his or her own person strengths coaching throughout the program. The program includes 10 one-hour coaching sessions and additional sessions are available for an additional fee.