Multi-State Online Professional Development ToolKit

Changing professional development and meeting teacher needs

MOPD - A Model for Online Professional Development

Teaching Online

This section of the ToolKit provides information about what is required to be a quality online instructor. This page, like all of the other ToolKit pages, provides easy access to documents, Web sites and other materials that contain up-to-date and reliable information to assist in planning and developing online courses.

Chat Protocol, by Dr. Paul Giguere
This document contains guidelines for conducting synchronous chats during online courses. Included are a set of symbols to use after a statement or question when someone is talking or has the floor to eliminate the problem of breaking up a person's postings in the chat.

Effective Online Facilitation- Australian Flexible Learning Framework, Australia Flexible Learning Quick Guide Series, published February 2003
http://flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/facilitation.pdf
This “Quick Guide” is part of a series on key issues related to online delivery of vocation education and training. It contains descriptions of the role of the facilitator, skills needed, challenges and how to measure effectiveness, as well as links to other articles on online facilitation.

Essential Principles of High-Quality Online Teaching, by William R. Thomas, SREB
http://www.sreb.org/programs/EdTech/pubs/Quality_Online_Teaching.asp
What are the essential qualities of an online teacher? This publication looks at the unique skills required for online teachers and concludes with a checklist that can be used to help determine whether such teachers meet standards in several areas.

How to Structure Online Discussions for Meaningful Discourse (2003), by Patricia Gilbert and Nada Dabbagh of Harvard and George Mason respectively http://www.aect.org/Divisions/gilbert.asp
This paper looks at the impact of criteria and protocols to make asynchronous discussions meaningful. The authors argue that it is important to understand what supports can help learners demonstrate their critical thinking skills by "1) making inferences, (2) relating course content to prior knowledge and experience, and (3) interpreting content through the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of others' understandings."

(My) Three Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy Bill Pelz. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN). June 2004. http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v8n3/v8n3_pelz.asp
Bill Pelz was the 2003 recipient of the Sloan-C award for Excellence in Online Teaching. To quote: It took the most part of 30 years of college teaching to "realize that the learner is, for the most part, in charge of what gets learned. Implementing this point of view online has, for me blurred, somewhat, the distinction between effective teaching and pedagogically sound instructional design . If I create an environment in which a majority of students gladly learn that which they and I deem relevant and salient, then have I succeeded as a teacher or as a designer?--and does it matter?" His article is interspersed with his ideas and snippits from his online courses.

Online Learning: Social Interaction and the Creation of a Sense of Community by Joanne M. McInnerney and Tim S. Roberts. Educational Technology & Society. 2004.  http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/7_3/8.html
This paper centers on the sense of isolation that online study may engender among learners, a factor often ignored by many educators, but one that may make the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful online learning environment for many students. The authors suggest three protocols that can be built into the fabric of online courses in order that a sense of community may be enabled to exist, and productive social interaction can occur.

Preparing K-12 Teachers to Teach Online - by Greg Kearsley & Robert Blomeyer
http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/TeachingOnline.htm
This article discusses key issues to teaching online based on experiences by NCREL. One of the authors, Bob Blomeyer, is a senior program associate at NCREL and is the program director for the online teacher certification program.

Showing Up to Class in Pajamas (or Less!): The Fantasies and Realities of On-line Professional Development Courses for Teachers.  By Abbie Brown and Tim Green
http://www.sreb.org/programs/EdTech/toolkit/Pajamas.pdf
The authors from California State University at Fullerton are professors in the Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education.  Their article looks at the realities of facilitating online courses for teachers.

Successful Online Professional Development, Barbara Treacy, Glenn Kleiman, and Kirsten Peterson (September 2002)
http://www.edtechleaders.org/Resources/articles/SuccessfulOPD.pdf
This article presents an overview of the key lessons learned in the EdTech Leaders Online (ETLO) program about how online learning can build capacity for technology integration and help school districts, state departments of Education, regional service providers and teacher training programs meet the challenge of providing effective professional development for teachers and administrators. It includes a description of the learning community approach to online professional development and important lessons learned through the implementation of this approach in school districts throughout the country. One central message is that online professional development is most effective when it is integrated with face-to-face activities in a multi-faceted, ongoing professional development program. This article was published in the September 2002 issue of Learning & Leading with Technology, a publication of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

Teaching Courses Online: How Much Time Does It Take?
http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v7n3/pdf/v7n3_lazarus.pdf
This is a longitudinal case study examining three asynchronous online courses at the University of Michigan-Dearborn to see the amount of time required to teach the online courses. The study found that the time required was three to seven hours per week, with the greatest time commitment during the first and last two weeks of the semesters. It also identifies that “unlike many live courses, the students participated more in the discussions than the instructor did.”

 

For more information, e-mail Bill Thomas at bthomas@sreb.org.