Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), two long-established and high regarded non-profit organizations, are collaborating with State Education Agencies (SEAs) and two of the Regional Technology in Education Consortia (SEIRTEC and NEIRTEC) on a large-scale program that will enable SEAs to make effective use of online professional education to improve teacher quality, administrator quality, and student achievement, thereby helping them meet the primary goals of NCLB. This initiative includes the following inter-related and synergistic components.

The EdTech Leaders® Online program, developed by EDC, offers a comprehensive package of training, technical assistance, and resources to enable educational organizations to develop their capacity to offer effective online professional development. More than 700 individuals, from more than 60 SEAs, school districts and other organizations in 26 states, have participated in this program since its inception in 1999, and they, in turn, have provided online professional development workshops to more than 10,000 educators. More information is available at www.edtechleaders.org.

Organized by SREB in partnership with the EDC EdTech Leaders Online program, this initiative has a mission to establish online instruction as an important way of providing professional development for teachers and other educators in SREB states. This initiative promotes high quality online professional development by training and supporting online instructors and sharing course content among participating states.

This initiative began with 76 individuals (primarily state department of education staff) from 11 SREB states participating in the EdTech Leaders® Online training in January through April, 2003. In April 2003, SREB convened a meeting with the contact person from each participating state. As a result of the significant success of the training experience and clear readiness of states to participate in online professional development, the group unanimously agreed that the initiative should move forward. A total of 15 states, the original 11 plus four additional ones, have expressed interest in expanding upon this initial work to establish an ongoing, multi-state online professional development initiative with the following goals:

• Provide high-quality training opportunities for online professional development instructors;
• Provide mentor support with electronic and real-time meeting opportunities for online professional development instructors;
• Develop a repository and coordinate the sharing of course content in the form of “elearning objects” among participating states; and
• Gather and share information about best practices, criteria, guidelines, and research data.

This Toolkit will provide a set of resources to guide states, districts, colleges and universities in planning, implementing, and evaluating online professional development programs, both to enhance existing face-to-face professional development offerings and to provide a new means of reaching educators with limited access to professional development, such as those in rural settings.

EDC, in collaboration with Boston College and with funding from the National Science Foundation Research on Learning and Education (ROLE) Initiative, is beginning a research project that will compare the impact on teachers knowledge and classroom practices of self-paced, individualized online learning; several types of online learning community approaches; hybrid approaches that combine the strengths of online and onsite activities; and a more traditional, face-to-face professional development approach.

This initiative is being planned to address the critical need to provide effective and flexible professional development programs to increase the number of fully qualified middle school mathematics teachers. The goal is to have a multi-state collaboration to define standards for middle school mathematics teachers and to develop, implement, and evaluate state-wide programs, making significant use of online learning, to address this critical teacher quality need. This initiative builds upon the work of SREB's Middle Schools That Work project and EDC's work in providing professional development to middle school mathematics teachers within the Maine Learning Technologies Initiative.

These five components, combined with the expertise and commitments of the SEAs involved and the base of experience and resources provided by SREB, EDC, SEIRTEC, and NEIRTEC, position this initiative to play a significant role in developing capacity to further teacher quality programs throughout the SREB region and in other states, and to support achieving the goals of Department of Education Initiatives, including: Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers for Technology; the Rural Task Force; the Math and Science Initiative; and the Higher Education Initiative. Collectively, organizations participating in the Multi-State Online Professional Development Initiative bring a wealth of experience, expertise, and resources relevant to each of these Department of Education programs. We look forward to opportunities to make our resources and expertise available to help these important initiatives move forward and have positive impact for teachers and students throughout the country.

For more information, contact:

For further information, please contact Bill Thomas, bill.thomas@sreb.org