Posts tagged professional development
Online Faculty Professional Development
0As online education continues to grow, it is increasingly necessary that faculty members are trained in the appropriate instructional practices. Adjunct faculty, with their diverse skills and backgrounds, comprise the fastest-growing group of higher education employees. McDaniel & Shaw (2010) emphasize the importance of a focus on evaluating teacher performance and determining if instructors are equipped to teach online. A commitment to consistent training is crucial for fostering lifelong learning. These aspects are critical for any organization, and “all organizations should have an agenda and strategic plan aimed toward promoting change” and a method for providing “training and development in order to achieve these goals” (McDaniel & Shaw, 2000, p. 5).
With the continued widespread growth in online course offerings, it’s only a matter of time before nearly every course will have an online counterpart, so instructors must be educated in online instructional practices. In some cases, an organization’s accreditation status can even be put in jeopardy if professional development programs are not sufficiently in line with the mission of the institution.
The emphases on evaluation and lifelong learning are important points to which any organization utilizing or implementing online training should adhere. Institutions should conduct quality assurance reviews to ensure faculty possess the proper skills for online education.
References
McDaniel, H., & Shaw, M. E. (2010). Online adjunct faculty professional development and training in higher education. Journal of eLearning and Online Teaching, 1(5).
Shifting Toward Best Practices in Online Learning
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Utah Senate Bill 65 was recently passed, which establishes a statewide online education network, where students can earn credits from different schools. As a result, our attention has shifted toward fully online courses and how we can implement them, and how we can improve our existing hybrid courses.
There are a good number of teachers in Weber School District using Moodle, but we’re struggling with getting teachers over the learning curve. And the problem is the same as one identified by Lane 2009. For our teachers, Moodle is a counterintuitive interface which “stops Web novices in their tracks” (p. 4). “Educational technologists look at a [course management system] and see its many features, but faculty see an inflexible system that cannot be customized” (p. 6). There are probably very few teachers in our district that have taught in a fully online learning environment, let alone do so effectively by adjusting their pedagogy accordingly.
I realize Moodle is frustrating for some of our teachers, but I also realize now that it’s our fault. We handed them a default course template that does not adopt best practices in online learning. Moodle’s topical format isn’t particularly pretty, and I’ve seen some teachers’ online courses that scroll forever downward with a neverending pile of assignments and resources. It is, quite frankly, confusing. As a result, we are redesigning the Moodle course format and implementing our own. The goal is to make an interface that’s more intuitive for novice online/hybrid teachers, makes it easier to navigate for students, and encourages stronger constructivist methodologies in the instructional practices.
What Utah is doing right now with online courses, I imagine one day will happen with professional development, even if not formally mandated. If we can share educational courses for K-12 students statewide, why not the same for teachers? There are many similarities and best practices we can identify in both K-12 and adult online courses, such as a strong focus on collaboration — the lack of a physical social presence necessitates a stronger cyber-social presence. Teachers should encourage discussion among students, and give numerous opportunities for interaction and collaborative learning. And as noted in a study by Arbaugh (2000), students in web-based courses conversed more than the old brick-and-mortar classrooms (as cited in Ternus, Palmer, & Faulk, 2007).
Collaboration was the primary focus in our Moodle class at the BrainBlast conference last summer. Yet as I discovered in my recent evaluation of Moodle, there has been little to no change in how our teachers use Moodle for collaboration. If it’s true that in the hybrid course, we must meet best practices for both online learning and classroom learning, then we need to place more focus on the online learning space in Moodle, and use it as a constructivist learning environment, rather than just a repository for stashing assignments and quizzes (Ternus, Palmer, & Faulk, 2007). Likewise, any future online professional development class we build must follow the same standards of highly constructivist learning if it is to truly succeed.
References
Arbaugh, J. B. (2000). Virtual classroom characteristics and student satisfaction with Internet-based MBA courses. Journal of Management Education, 24(1), 32-54.
Lane, L. M. (2009). Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems affect teaching. First Monday, 14(10).
Ternus, M. P., Palmer, K. L., & Faulk, D. R. (2007). Benchmarking Quality in Online Teaching and Learning: A Rubric for Course Construction and Evaluation. Journal of Effective Teaching, 7(2), 51-67.
Related articles
- A blend of Moodle and Web 2.0 technologies (cruiselyna.wordpress.com)
- Can I look at your Moodle……please? (edugeek.net)
- Merits of Moodle (weber.k12.ut.us)
Improving Our Self-Directed Professional Development in Moodle
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Moodle has become the primary vehicle of our online learning opportunities. Our Inservice portal was moved off the outdated Moodle server to the newer one that is currently used by teachers and students as an online classroom management tool. The district will be piloting its first entirely online course for K-12 students in the near future, but we do have a number of self-directed courses available. Instructional topics consist of things like using AESOP (our online leave reporter), MyStudent (our administrative desktop application), the Video Portal for playing licensed videos (only accessible inside the district), and others. The content in most of these courses are divided into multiple sections (Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced). Participants typically watch one or more videos showing the features of the tool, after which they must pass a quiz with an 80% or greater score. If they pass, they receive a printable certificate recognizing their completion of the course, and earn certification points that can be used toward CACTUS re-licensure credit.
We also use Moodle to deliver the annual instruction, required for all district employees, on Blood Borne Pathogens, hazardous materials in the workplace, and the district’s policy on harassment and discrimination. Moodle will continue to be the chosen means to deliver these forms of online professional development.
However, I think we can do better. I question the effectiveness of these self-directed courses, for a few reasons:
- There is no measurement of preexisting skills and knowledge to use as a baseline, to evaluate learning.
- The short 10-question assessment accompanying each course’s section does not properly measure the effectiveness of the courses. Users are free to retake the quiz as many times as they need to get it right. There is no penalty for retaking the quiz.
- We have no data on the impact of these courses. In fact, from personal experience I can vouch that many of the participants who passed some of these courses, are later stumped on very basic aspects of the tools in question. An adequate instructional program should minimize these instances. But more importantly, we should be able to assess how many people are experiencing these post-training difficulties.
- Some of the courses haven’t been revised in over 3 years.
Without proper assessment, a self-directed course isn’t much different than just posting the tutorials on WeberTube. There is value to self-directed learning, but we need to take a more active role in evaluating these courses. Participants need to be given the chance to put their knowledge into practice. Follow-up surveys could be conducted to determine if the training impacted their behavior 1 month, 3 months, or even 6 months down the road. And revisions to the courses should be frequent and consistent with the data gathered.
Evaluating Online Professional Development
0I’ve been musing over how to revise the online professional development offerings in our district for awhile. Our district is getting close to the point where we can start implementing changes that ensure meaningful learning. I’ve been studying different aspects of evaluations, namely the basics of how to conduct them and collect data.
A goal-based evaluation would be ideal for our online inservice. This type of evaluation measures efficiency (the timeliness in which the learning is conducted), effectiveness (whether the participants actually learned the material following the instruction), and impact (how their behavior is affected long-term). There is value to both qualitative and quantitative measurement tools, and the data we gather should consist of both.
It’s important to understand the stakeholders involved as well. I would like to tie our online inservice with curricular standards, particularly if any online learning is extended to students, and not just employees. We already allow our teachers to earn state CACTUS credit through our inservice portal, but I think without proper assessments the credit given does not demonstrate actual learning.
It’s strange that we have overlooked evaluation in a lot of our online professional development. It seems obvious now. We should set clear goals and objectives, outlining what we wish to accomplish. Evaluation should occur every step of the way, through both formative and summative assessments. Self-directed courses should be kept to a minimum, since it can be more difficult to collect formative assessment in this venue. In directed courses, the instructor can observe how the learners interact with the material, and take notes. I tend to favor project-oriented learning, so I don’t necessarily prefer quiz-based summative assessments. Final projects which effectively demonstrate all the material learned in the online class could be constructed instead, and assessed through a rubric. Another assessment, perhaps conducted through observation only, should also provide a means to determine the impact of the training one, three, or six months down the road. Has the material been applied to the participant’s instructional practices? Has their behavior changed? For example, if they participated in introductory blog training, are they now actively using their blog for instructional purposes and parent outreach?
Determining exactly how to form these assessments is what I’m still unclear about, and I still struggle with deciding how to form the questions in an evaluation, and knowing what to ask. I would like to focus more and get some practice determining and writing questions that lead to clear process descriptions and goal statements.
Three Articles on Professional Development Models
0I evaluated a few different professional development models. Even though the district does a lot to train faculty and staff, there’s still a lot of improvement we can make to our district’s professional development opportunities. We could also gather better statistics on the effectiveness of our existing professional development.
There are four main venues of PD in our district. We have an online self-directed learning portal, two site-based PD programs — one for administrators, one for teachers, and an annual [site-based] summer conference where hundreds of our district’s teachers and administrators come for intensive workshop-based training on a variety of technology tools. I realize the value of ongoing professional development. Teachers should not simply learn something then not have it reinforced. While self-motivation is essential for any teacher’s PD, districts should also find ways to create learning opportunities that directly benefit their careers.
I don’t think our teachers have responded that well to our online inservice portal, though that’s largely because of a lack of summative evaluation and revision in the instructional material. This will need some revising before it gets to an acceptable state. I’d also like to explore more models of professional development and put them to use in our district. One particular PD model is almost completely unused: live web conferencing. The state provides everyone with free Wimba accounts, but no one I’m aware of even uses them. I’d like to start organizing weekly/biweekly live professional development sessions just for our employees, perhaps during prep hours or after school is released.
Three Professional Development Models
Duncan-Howell, J. (2010). Teachers making connections: Online communities as a source of professional learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(2), 324-340. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00953.x
The author, Jennifer Duncan-Howell, discusses the benefits of online communities for professional development. Social networking is a valuable model for professional development, and has increased the depth of online learning available to teachers. This article shares the results of a study on three online learning communities, and demonstrates that teachers can benefit from engaging community-oriented learning environments, as 86.7% of the teachers surveyed considered their online communities a valuable form of professional learning.
There’s a few good things to think about in this article. My district could be doing a lot more to involve teachers in online communities. I set up a Moodle-based forum a couple years ago for all our district’s teachers and administrators, but there is only about one new post every other month. This seems unacceptable coming from a district with 1500+ teachers. A potential goldmine of collaborative information is sitting there, unused. Few will disagree that being connected to like-minded educators is absolutely invaluable for teachers. Being able to stay on top of emerging trends, and share resources, lesson plans, ideas for integrating technology into the classroom, inservice opportunities, and strategies for engaging students are important. The problem is, many teachers don’t realize they can establish a venue of collaboration outside the walls of their own school. Teachers should realize they don’t have to work inside a box, and that there’s a worldwide learning network out there waiting for them, filled with thousands of educators willing to step in and help them out.
Mushayikwa, E., & Lubben, F. (2009). Self-directed professional development: Hope for teachers working in deprived environments? Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3), 375-382. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2008.12.003
This article explores self-directed learning in technologically underprivileged educational systems, specifically among teachers in Zimbabwe. I was particularly interested in the comments made by the teachers, as they share how they currently use technology for learning (e.g. using email because they lack travel funds to come together in groups, using the Internet to make lesson plan organization easier), and the concerns behind self-directed professional development. The model presented in the article is really a model of concerns. It first addresses the basic needs of feeling that professional learning and collaboration is worthwhile in the first place, followed by concerns over career development and content knowledge. When these are met, the teacher is guided toward professional efficacy and efficacy in their classroom, and finally becomes an effective teacher.
This article made me think about our own school district’s self-paced inservice site. It’s Moodle-based, and teachers can use it to earn state certification credit. I didn’t design any of the courses — one of our techs did — and now after several weeks in my instructional design class now I’m starting to notice that the courses could be developed much better. There were no needs or learner analyses conducted when the courses were created, and there’s no form of evaluation on the effectiveness of the learning. I’ll need to get more involved in the instructional design process for our online learning opportunities, and use what I’ve been learning about to benefit my district’s teachers. There is much more to professional development than simply providing a few training exercises and a printable, pixelated certificate they can hang on their wall.
Gerber, B. L., Brovey, A. J., & Price, C. B. (2001). Site-based professional development: Learning cycle and technology integration. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED472987
This article intrigued me because it directly analyzes how professional development impacts not only teachers, but students as well. The authors approach the study from an empirical perspective: “Students learn most readily about things that are directly accessible to their senses – tactile, kinesthetic, visual, and auditory. Teaching should be consistent with the nature of scientific inquiry” (Gerber et al., 2001, p. 6). The authors also make a good point when they write, “Cognitive research strongly suggests students know less than we think they do following instruction. The quality of student understanding should be emphasized rather than the quantity of information presented” (Ibid).
Following this particular study, teachers reported that students were finding more ways to foster their own creativity, were more inquisitive in the learning process, and that their mutual relationships with their teachers improved significantly.I think more studies like this would be worthwhile, because sometimes we forget that the final intended beneficiary of any professional development opportunity is not the teacher, but ultimately the student. Professional development should help teachers become better at their job, and in return students should benefit from the extra skills and techniques the teacher has developed.
