Presentation on online learning for i3 Grantees

1. Online Learning to Support
Educator Professional
Development
Barbara Treacy
i3 Grantees Meeting
October 15, 2012

2. Questions
 What are the advantages/challenges of online PD?
 What have we learned about making online PD
effective? What are some examples?
 How do we build effective online PD, learning
communities and coaching models? How do we keep
it dynamic and engaging?
 How do we prepare teachers to facilitate and design
online PD?
 What technologies should we use?

3. Online Learning Opportunities
 Flexibility: Anytime, anyplace learning
 Access: To experts and resources that may not be
available locally
 Reflection and deeper learning: Educators participate and
interact with colleagues on their own schedules
 Personalization: Custom paths for a variety of goals
 Cost-effectiveness: Eliminates travel/related costs
 Extended learning over time: Opportunities for educators
to try things out in classrooms with feedback
 Scalability and sustainability: Capacity-building approaches
work
 Data and Assessment: Increased access to learner data

4. “The illiterate of the 21st
century will not be those
who cannot read and
write, but those who
cannot learn, unlearn,
and relearn.”
-Alvin Toffler

5. What’s Different about Online Learning?
 Content: Different structure of content
 Technology: Increasing choice of tools; some will disappear
quickly and technical issues can occur regularly
 Accessibility: Online learning increases access but access and
accessibility issues must be addressed
 Social dynamic: Different interaction methods & pacing; new
strategies needed to address cohort & individual needs
 Discussion: Specific facilitation strategies needed; importance
of written communication and “online voice”
 Assessment: New tools available but new strategies needed
 Facilitation and design: Labor intensive activities!

6. More on Accessibility Needs
 Video and audio: requires captioning, transcripts, ability
to pace to be fully accessible
 Multi-media requirements not activated in schools
 Image descriptions needed for webpages/documents
 PDF’s not accessible to many screen readers; must create
word or other accessible versions of documents
 CMS’s are generally designed to address accessibility but
won’t insure uploaded content is accessible
For more info and to test accessibility of a webpage:
http://webaim.org

7. Example Program: E-Learning for Educators
Goal: build state online teacher PD programs focused on
content, pedagogy, student learning
 10 state consortium: AL, DE, KY,
MD, MO, MS, NC, NH, PA, WV
 Funded in 2005 by USED
 Capacity building approach: EDC online
facilitator & course developer training for all states
 Few face-to-face meetings; annual Leadership Academy
 State leadership teams led local program
 Large-scale experimental research showed significant
impact on teachers and students

8. Impact: Ability to Scale
 10 state programs aligned to unique state goals
 500+ workshop facilitators trained
 2000+ workshops delivered
 25,000+ participants completed workshops
 450+ course developers trained
 91% teachers rated workshops excellent/very good
 98% teachers agreed/strongly agreed courses
aligned with their school’s PD goals
 96% facilitators rated training excellent /very good

9. State Example: DE Science Course
“Delaware Watersheds”
 Created and facilitated by
DE educators trained to
design and deliver online PD
 Developed to provide
convenient, high quality PD
for 7th grade teachers
assigned to teach Delaware
Watersheds, an integrated Earth Science course taught
across the state

10. Research Study
 Goal: examine the effect of online PD on teacher
knowledge, practices, and student learning
 Conducted by: Boston College
 Included: 4 large-scale randomized experiments using 3
workshops designed by EDC for teachers in:
– English/Language Arts (4th and 8th Grades)
– Math (5th and 7th Grades)
 Participation: 369 Teachers; 21,000 Students
 Results: Significant impact on teachers and students
across subjects/grades

11. Example Research Course: Functions

12. Online PD Lessons and Challenges
 Facilitators need training, incentives & time
 Content development is labor intensive & requires training
 Importance of team approach
 Multi-media is costly; little research on benefits (i.e. video)
 Marketing strategy needed to generate teacher enrollment
 Content must be dynamic; requires updating
 Credit or incentives for participants boosts participation
 Course management system is needed; requires investment
 Need for registration systems as program grows
 Important to integrate with other initiatives/programs
 Sustainability requires attention to cost structures/fees

13. Key Lesson: Importance of
Learning Community Models
“Learning is social, and we will all get better at our
projects and at learning from each other by social learning
together.”
-John Seely Brown, USC and Deloitte Center for the Edge
How do we keep online learning dynamic and engaging?

14. Ten Tips for Effective Online Facilitation
1. Make everyone feel welcome & heard;
create a comfortable environment
2. Establish clear goals & expectations at the outset
3. Provide behind-the-scenes support via email
4. Foster communication between participants
5. Model participation & discussion techniques for participants
6. Keep the discussion alive; prevent stagnancy
7. Keep the discussion on-topic
8. Guide participants through the curriculum
9. Make sure the audience & the content are in sync
10. Bring closure to each topic before moving on
http://courses.edtechleaders.org/documents/opd/ETLO_Ten_Tips.htm

15. Building Online Learning Communities: Learning by Doing

16. Technology Considerations
 Focus on the learning goals!
 More choices than ever now; multiple ways to meet goals
 Hardware is cheaper, more ubiquitous, more mobile
 Explosion of Web 2.0/apps: easy to use but hard to use well
 Increased access to broadband – but still need to design for
all access levels
 Multi-media development is costly, and so are the updates
 Facilitator training: more important than “tool” training
“A focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do
not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools
toward our own ends.” -Henry Jenkins, USC

17. Choosing Technology Tools
 Course Management Systems
 Integrate content, discussion, assessment,
data collection, users, social media
 Support courses, coaching and more
 Social Media
 Supports formal/informal learning;
courses and coaching
 Varied uses/user roles: creation, lurking,
sharing, collaboration, communication
 Synchronous/asynchronous options
 Examples: blogs, wikis, micro-blogging,
social networking, virtual meetings,
content sharing, Google Apps, etc.

18. Recap: Key Lessons
 Online learning is different; requires careful attention to
goals, planning, training, design, technology tools and
implementation
 Online PD can improve educator practice and student
learning
 Online learning community models foster reflection and
inquiry based approaches with careful facilitation
 Learning goals must lead; technology supports
 Technology and online learning can enable scale
 Online learning is not a simple solution: can be effective
but requires time and resources

19. The power of connected learning
“If we want our students
to succeed in a global
environment, then we,
as educators, must be
engaged in 21st century
content, context, tools, thinking skills and assessment.
Thanks to online learning I am a 21st century
life-long learner!”
-JoAnn Nuzum, WV online facilitator and developer

20. Thank you!
Barbara Treacy
EdTech Leaders Online http://edtechleaders.org
Education Development Center http://edc.org