Youth Development Institute

Best Practices in OST Program Evaluation

This course provides guidance on designing and implementing program evaluation activities that can support you in strengthening programs and engaging in advocacy.

Building Assets with Youth

This course provides an overview of the 40 Developmental Assets Framework and how it applies to your work with youth. Learn why some kids struggle and others succeed, and how you can play an important part in their success.

Child Development

This course focuses on the development - both cognitive and physical - of elementary aged youth. In conjunction with the Overview of Positive Youth Development course, Child Development provides comprehensive guidance on how to support youth.

Civic Engagement

In this course you will learn many ways to educate and engage youth in civic action and support them in becoming responsible members of the community.

Conflict Resolution

This course provides activities, resources, and applications for dealing with conflict. The focus is two fold: it examines how you resolve conflict, and how you can help youth resolve conflict.

Engaging Parents

This course discusses the benefits of parent involvement and identifies different approaches and strategies for engaging parents.

Health and Academic Achievement

This course explores the important ties between academic performance and health and ways that out-of-school-time programs can support youth to have good health and academic outcomes.

Integrating STEM Into Youth Programs

This course introduces the topic of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and provides guidance on how to integrate STEM into summer and afterschool programs.

Leadership - Part 1

This course introduces key concepts related to leadership and focuses on the "big picture" roles of leaders of out-of-school time and youth programs.

Leadership, Part 2

This course focuses on the interpersonal aspects of leadership and supervision. Prior to taking this course, we strongly recommend that you take Leadership 1, which introduces "big picture" concepts in leadership.

Learning Beyond the School Day

This course focuses on different ways that OST development professionals can support youth achievement of academic standards through informal education, with special focus on standards in the state of Arkansas.

Maltreatment of Children

This course identifies the different ways that children can be maltreated and the signs that indicate a child has been abused. Reporting responsibilities and procedures are also outlined.

Mitigating Summer Learning Loss

This course introduces the latest research on the "summer slide" and what youth populations are most affected by it. The course teaches about best practices in summer learning programming and practical strategies for incorporating academic elements i

OST Emergency Preparedness and Program Safety

This course teaches how to effectively prepare for and respond to disasters or crisis situations that might affect OST programs.

OST Program Start-Up Basics

Overview of Positive Youth Development

Supporting youth development, for any age youth, is key to ensure a healthy and well adjusted youth. In this course you will learn about risk factors, prevention factors and how to build resiliency in today's youth through quality youth programming.

The Science of Learning and Development

This course introduces information about the Science of Learning and Development (SoLD), a collaborative and research-based approach to enhance life paths for all young people, regardless of the levels of adversity they have encountered or experience

Supporting Youth to be Workplace Ready

This course provides youth development professionals with tips and tools on preparing youth in their programs to be successful in the workforce.

Unhealthy Coping Behaviors in Youth

This course highlights coping behaviors that youth development professionals need to know about in their work: depression, substance and alcohol abuse, physical self-injury/self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders