Program overview
The Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration (CVTI) supports excellence and innovation in transition programming for current and former members of the armed forces.
As a service member in transition, you may face barriers reaching your potential in accessing higher education and beginning meaningful careers, despite the many effective programs offered to this population by the Department of Labor, Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program, and other programs offered by the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. With this in mind, the CVTI is dedicated to creating free courses that will help to break down those barriers to your successful transition. Currently we are offering three courses to meet these demands, with more courses on the way. While these courses are created for veterans and active duty service members, they are free and available for all.
Attaining Higher Education is a course designed to facilitate the successful transition of active duty service members and veterans to postsecondary education, whether at a two- or four-year college for an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, or even graduate school.
University Studies for Student Veterans helps orient veterans to the norms and expectations of the college classroom, along with offering strategies to ease the transition, to help achieve academic goals, and to allow students to optimize their college education.
Find Your Calling: Transition Principles for Returning Veterans will focus on the development of interpersonal, intrapersonal, and intellectual character strengths as they relate to making a successful career transition from military service to the civilian workforce. The course content is meant to provide you with a framework for an iterative process of self-reflection and the development of practical skills that enables you to make career choices that better align with your values, ambitions, and continued service. Ultimately, this course helps you answer the question: What should I do next?
What will you learn
- General and detailed information about colleges and universities.
- Foundational academic and study skills for achieving academic success in college.
- Strategies for more effective reading, writing, test preparation, and time management.
- Practical tips and strategies for making a successful military-to-civilian career transition.
- A framework for how to begin thinking about and exploring new career opportunities.
Program Class List
1Attaining Higher Education
Course Details
2University Studies for Student Veterans
Course Details
3Find Your Calling: Career Transition Principles for Returning Veterans
Course Details
Meet Your Instructors

Beth E. Morgan

R.J. Jenkins

Skip Bailey

Tanya Ang

Sara Remedios

Josh Edwin

Michael Abrams

William Deresiewicz

Sheena Iyengar

Sebastian Junger
Course Overview
The skills you learned in the military will go a long way toward helping you succeed in college, but if you’re looking for some extra support – or an academic tune-up – then you’ll find it in this course. We know that the culture of higher education is different from the culture of the military in meaningful ways, and we also know that one of the keys to excelling in college – especially for student veterans – is learning to navigate these differences successfully, right from the very start.
This course aims to help you do just that. First, the course will orient you to the norms and expectations of the college classroom. The quicker you know what is expected of you, the quicker you can start learning. Second, the course will offer you strategies to ease your transition, to help you achieve your academic goals, and to allow you to make the most of your college education.
While this course is open to everyone, the content has been tailored specifically for student veterans currently pursuing higher education, active duty servicemembers who aspire to start school or return to school soon, and higher education professionals who work to support student veterans at their schools. If this sounds like you, and if you’re ready to learn how to make your transition easier and more successful, then we hope you’ll join us.
What You’ll Learn
- Foundational academic and study skills for achieving academic success in college
- Strategies for more effective reading, writing, test preparation, and time management
- Proven tips for students taking STEM and other technical courses
- Metacognition and academic mindset

Veteran Transition: Academic Excellence and Career Readiness
Transition from active service to college and the workforce
Meet Your Instructors

R.J. Jenkins

Sara Remedios

Josh Edwin
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Nina Huntemann
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Ben Piscopo
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Robyn Belair
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Julie Carmean
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Diane Ellison
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Renee Pilbeam
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Vicki Harmon
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George Siemens
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Justin Dellinger
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Matt Crosslin
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Tanya Joosten
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Course Overview
Have you ever wondered why some classroom discussions are lively and engaging and others more like painful interrogations? Why some students always have an answer ready, but others never participate? Why everybody (or nobody) laughs at a teacher’s jokes? What role multiple languages should play in classroom talk?
This course gives classroom teachers at all levels and subject areas the analytic tools to answer these and more questions about classroom communication.
Each lesson introduces fundamental concepts and techniques of classroom discourse analysis, developing an analytic toolkit and promoting critical reflection on pedagogical practices over five weeks.
What You’ll Learn
You’ll explore student engagement strategies including how to identify and analyze:
- turn-taking patterns and their function
- question types and their effects on classroom talk
- the role of intonation, gesture and other subtle cues on interaction
- types and functions of classroom storytelling
- types of class participation and their effects
Prerequisites
3rd or 4th Year Undergraduate Students or Graduate Students who are student teaching, tutoring, or practicing teachers.
Meet Your Instructors

Betsy R. Rymes
Course Overview:
All of us carry explicit or implicit theories of learning. They manifest themselves in the ways we learn, the ways we teach, and the ways we think about leadership and learning.
In Leaders of Learning, you will identify and develop your personal theory of learning, and explore how it fits into the shifting landscape of learning. This isn’t just about schools, it’s about the broader and bigger world of learning.
The education sector is undergoing great transformation, and in the coming decades will continue to change. How we learn, what we learn, where we learn, and why we learn; all these questions will be reexamined. In Leaders of Learning we will explore learning, leadership, organizational structure, and physical design.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to define your personal theory of learning
- What leadership looks like in different learning environments
- How an organization’s structure reflects its theories of learning
- How physical and digital design shape learning
- How neuroscience will affect the future of learning
Meet Your Instructor:

Richard Elmore
Course Overview
Technology, digital media and mobile access have changed how people learn. Today’s students want to be engaged and self-directed with digital content, available anytime, anywhere. This is a challenge for instructional designers as they create online learning experiences.
As an instructional designer, it’s critical to understand emerging learning theories including Bloom’s taxonomy and constructivism and how they relate to the way people learn in our digitally connected world. This course, which is part of the Instructional Design and Technology MicroMasters Program, explores the evolution of learning theories from traditional Socratic methods to emerging learning sciences. Additionally, you will explore curriculum design models using performance-based assessments to create effective and engaging learning experiences.
After a solid foundation of how people learn today, you will explore technology’s role in supporting and enhancing the teaching and learning process.
Previous background in teaching or professional development is a plus, but not required. Join us and launch your career as an instructional designer.
This course is part of the Instructional Design and Technology MicroMaster’s program from UMGC. Upon completion of the program and receipt of the verified MicroMaster’s certificate, learners may then transition into the full UMGC Master’s Program in Learning Design and Technology. See the MicroMasters program page for more information.
What you’ll learn
- To apply learning theories and their impact in the design of online learning
- Technology’s role in the teaching and learning process
- Curriculum design and how to apply Bloom’s taxonomy to engage students in the learning process
- To write effective performance assessments and scoring rubrics

MicroMasters® Program in Instructional Design and Technology
Design and operate the learning platforms of the future
Prerequisites
Basic experience in word processing and G Suite. A background in teaching, education, or professional development would be helpful but not required.
Who can take this course?
Unfortunately, learners from one or more of the following countries or regions will not be able to register for this course: Iran, Cuba and the Crimea region of Ukraine. While edX has sought licenses from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to offer our courses to learners in these countries and regions, the licenses we have received are not broad enough to allow us to offer this course in all locations. EdX truly regrets that U.S. sanctions prevent us from offering all of our courses to everyone, no matter where they live.
Meet Your Instructors

Randy Hansen
Course Overview
This capstone course will feature knowledge, disposition, and performance assessments that examine growth along dimensions critical to the effective leadership of educational innovation and improvement.
Learners will apply knowledge and principles of ambitious instruction, logics of innovation, improvement science, and exemplary cases to case studies of large-scale, practice-focused innovation. In doing so, they will identify and explain strengths in these innovations. They will also identify problems and challenges faced by these initiatives and, then, propose means of organizing and managing in response to those problems and challenges.
This course is part of the Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement MicroMasters Program offered by MichiganX.
What You’ll Learn
- Applications of improvement science
- Knowledge of strategies for leading educational innovation and improvement
- Dispositions essential to organizing and managing educational innovation and improvement
- Capabilities to construct research-based solutions to core challenges that arise in organizing and managing educational innovation and improvement
Prerequisites
Working knowledge of schools and education systems as well as the political, policy, and public pressures to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for all students.

MicroMasters® Program in Leading Educational Innovation and Improvement
Become an innovative leader in the classroom
Meet Your Instructors
