Well, that's an interesting question. In the meantime, I guess the long-about-way would be to add a Text label to the top of each course with the short name as the "Title", and then hide the label so it's not visible on the course page itself (unless you want it to be visible or students in the Course Index too):
But I'll be curious how it can be implemented through the theme, because 1 change I'd love to implement in my theme for the course Index is to add a "Name" for the panel (I've used CSS to add in the heading "Course Navigation"). Cause I find I'm mentioning the word "Course Index" and "Block Panel" and "Primary Navigation" in job aids, but no one really knows what these things are off the bat since these words dont actually appear.