The School of Education is pleased to offer two talent development courses in Spring 2021. These courses are part of the talent development (TD) concentration and are applicable to all majors at Drake. The talent development concentration prepares students for successful careers as trainers, instructional designers, and ultimately, training or talent development managers and directors. Talent development professionals design courses and teach inside organizations such as Principal Financial, Nationwide, and Pioneer.

Since these courses are cross-listed with graduate courses, undergraduate students will network with current talent development professionals. Experienced graduate students in talent development courses are asked to mentor undergraduate students in their projects and share real-world experience and expertise.

Learn more about this growing field on this page published by the Department of Labor. For details about the concentration, visit the Talent Development page. For additional information regarding the field of talent development, criteria for taking these courses, or pursuing this concentration, please contact Cris Wildermuth.

Both courses will be taught online and involve asynchronous work and synchronous meetings. The two Spring 2021 courses are:

TD 112: Technology and Learning (3 credit hours)
Do you like technology? Would you like to become more proficient in useful presentation, collaboration, and learning technologies? In this highly interactive course, you will learn how to use multiple free or low cost online applications to create more attractive presentations, add animation to your projects, instantly transform your text into beautiful videos, and more! Students also learn how to run webinars (presentations online) and discuss best practices for virtual meetings and collaboration. Ethical and legal considerations related to the use of technology in the workplace are also addressed.

TD 112 : Four Zoom meetings, 6–8:30 p.m. on Feb. 9, March 9, April 6, and May 4.

TD 114: Designing, Developing and Delivering Learning (3 credit hours)
Bring your creative juices to this course! You will learn how to design, develop, and facilitate effective learning experiences for adult learners.  Design and development topics include writing instructional objectives, selecting appropriate training methods, and designing and developing instructional games and simulations. Facilitation topics include the rationale for selecting various facilitation methods and approaches for engaging learners. And, since we are in a time of virtual teaching and learning, you will also learn how to move all those “learning goodies” into the virtual world! You don’t think it can be done? We will show you how we do it!

TD 114: Six Zoom meetings, Feb. 12–13, March 12–13, and April 23–24. The times of the meetings are Fridays between 6 and 8:30 p.m. and Saturdays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

— Cris Wildermuth, School of Education