More Than 20,0000 Florida Teachers Have Completed the Civics Seal of Excellence Course Powered By LSI and FCR-STEM
Tallahassee, Fla. – In February, the Learning Systems Institute (LSI) at Florida State University and the Florida Center for Research in STEM (FCR-STEM) celebrated a significant achievement. More than 20,000 Florida educators have completed the Florida Department of Education's Civics Seal of Excellence course, which is hosted on a portal developed by LSI and FCR-STEM and built on the CPALMS platform.
More than 48,000 educators have signed up to take the self-paced, facilitated course and 1,300 more educators are expected to complete the course this June. The LSI and FCR-STEM teams reviewed more than one million assignment submissions for the portal, which was built on the existing CPALMS platform by LSI staff. Florida teachers have spent over 1.3 million learning hours on this course.
"The work of our FCR-STEM team to leverage and build the civics portal in such a short amount of time and to be able to handle nearly 50,000 requests and 20,000 course completions is a testament to the work ethic and talent on our teams," said LSI Director Rabieh Razzouk. "Civics education has been a major priority for Governor DeSantis. I want to thank the Florida Department of Education for their support and partnership on this major project. "
The Civics Seal of Excellence platform, part of the Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, delivers civics education resources to all K-12 educators across the state. The platform features thousands of vetted instructional resources developed for teachers, students, and parents. The resources provide innovative ways to teach civics and integrate civics into other content areas.
While building this vast support system for the entire state, the FCR-STEM team guided the development and review process to support teachers as they prepared to implement Florida's Civics and Government Standards while working with other Florida universities and organizations. Students and parents can also access resources on the platform to enhance home-based support of civics education.
"The CPALMS platform, built by LSI and FCR-STEM staff, enabled us to develop the Civics Literacy portal, course Learning Management System, and course content, all within a short few months," said Razzouk. "We launched the portal on a Friday and all initial 20,000 available spots were taken before the end of the weekend."
The Florida Civics Seal of Excellence Course is the first-of-its-kind teacher training program with content aligned to Florida's Civics and Government Standards. Course modules feature video-based lessons created and delivered by 53 expert scholars and practitioners in history, government, and political science from Florida and around the country. The course takes participants an average of 55 hours over two months to complete and allows educators to add the Civics Seal of Excellence endorsement to their Florida Educator Certificates.
LSI is at the forefront of developing innovative solutions that bridge theory and practice in education. Our experts' advanced research provides state-of-the-art methods and a clear path for implementation. For 55 years, LSI has delivered systems that measurably improve the learning and performance of organizations and individuals in Florida and worldwide.