Online Professional Development for Virtual School Instructors Using New Web Tools

1. Online Professional Development for Virtual School Instructors Using New Web Tools Barbara Treacy, Cathy Cheely, Kirsten Peterson NACOL October 2008

2. Today’s Session • What’s different about teaching online and what training do online instructors need? • Virtual Virginia’s professional development opportunities for online instructors • EdTech Leaders Online instructor training for Virtual Virginia and others • Discussion, Questions/Answers

3. What’s Different About Teaching Online • Online curriculum is structured differently • Expectation: make use of new interactive tools • Social dynamic: different in an online classroom • Online discussion facilitation: different from f2f • Important to use multiple methods to communicate • Assessment strategies different in an online classroom • Technical challenges may occur

4. What’s the Same • Need to establish clear expectations • Need to understand the content and have good curriculum • Need to provide regular feedback • Important to listen to and learn from students • Need to meet individual student learning needs Need to think about how/where to do these things online

5. What professional development do online instructors need? • Training in content, pedagogy, online teaching skills and technical skills • Ongoing PD in online skills AND in content/pedagogy • Need experience in online environment with good models • Need to pay attention to online voice • Importance of ongoing communities of practice • Online PD – enables program scale-up

6. How are online instructors changing teaching? Virtual School Instructors • understand how to teach with technology • support individualized instruction as well as collaborative activities • increase student engagement and facilitate deeper discussions with effective questioning • are more accessible to their students • used to innovative approaches to assessment Virtual schools are “labs of educational reform” and virtual teachers are in the forefront!

7. Virtual Virginia

8. Virtual Virginia Virtual Virginia Professional Development Activities

9. Virtual Virginia Mission Control

10. Virtual Virginia Mission Control • Content area - All reference documents, forms and how-to’s • Tricks of the Trade – A place for colleagues to seek and to offer general instructional support as well as discuss best practices for online learning • Faculty Bulletin Board - A place to share non-instructional news with your colleagues • News Articles of Interest - This is a place to post news articles either in print or online that may be of interest to the online learning world • Department Forums – Science, Social Studies, English/Humanities, World Languages • Book Forum - Seven Habits discussions

11. Virtual Virginia Professional Development Announcement

12. Virtual Virginia Online Professional Development Session

13. Virtual Virginia Online Professional Development Agenda

14. Virtual Virginia Mission Control “I am in these two worlds every day...and I can't help comparing the two...but I love having these articles and being a part of such a group that spends this much time on reading and taking these issues seriously - something like this would not happen in a f2f school, I think.  At least not like this.  I do not mean to diss f2f organizations by saying this.  But it feels pretty revolutionary!  Vive la revolution!” (Adjunct French instructor who also teaches in traditional school)

15. Instructing Virtual School Courses • Structured, facilitated PD to prepare VS teachers • Seven one-week sessions + online orientation • Key understanding goals: • best practices in online course instruction • facilitation skills that foster reflective discussions leading to deeper learning • facility with communication and course management tools • effective strategies for assessing learning online

16. Timing of Instructor Training • organizations put groups of potential hires through the training and use performance as hiring criteria • Pros: increase chance of obtaining quality staff • Cons: participants can be distracted by unknown details about future teaching position • newly hired instructors take course prior to or while teaching their first course • Pros: just-in-time preparation, authentic • Cons: if during, can be overwhelming

17. Key Elements: Why does it work? • Chance to participate as learners first, in same environment • Modeling of successful online facilitation/instruction • Practical activities, each of which can be put to immediate use in own VS courses • welcome message, experimentation, planning template with rubric • Extended dialogue with peers and experienced facilitator • Resource and strategy sharing (archived) • Ongoing support of ETLO and local learning communities

18. Examples • Instructing Virtual School Courses • Fall 2008 Virtual Virginia (Desire2Learn CMS) https://d2l.virtualvirginia.org/ • How and Why we use New Web Tools • Example Web Tools used in Facilitation • Impromptu Tool Use

19. Participant Feedback "I am really going to miss this class and the unique forum it provided for all of the new people. I have never done any kind of staff development that was as helpful and on point as this class - and that is a new experience in the world of education for me. I am an old dog who has been able to learn lots of new tricks thanks to your support and encouragement. Merci beaucoup!" ~Linda Davidson, AP French Teacher, Virtual Virginia

20. Thank you! Barbara Treacy btreacy@edc.org Cathy Cheely Cathy.Cheely@doe.virginia.gov Kirsten Peterson kpeterson@edc.org