Technology Integration

• Principal Connections
• K-12 Total Cost of Ownership Web-Based Calculator

Online Professional Development

• Comprehensive Literacy Program
• Alabama Leadership Series
• eCoaching

Instructional Design

• Data-Based Decision Making: Resources for Educators
• Building Teachers: A Constructivist Approach to Introducing EducationCD-ROM

Research and Evaluation

• Toward an Effective Use of Technology in Education
• Action Research training for West Virginia Technology Integration Specialists

Facilitation

• Assessment Conference
• Webcast series for the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center

Online Professional Development: Comprehensive Literacy Program

Purpose: The Comprehensive Literacy Program consists of two online training courses that incorporated current understandings of scientifically based reading research to improve instruction and assessment in early literacy. Each course consists of five modules. The recommended timeline for completion for each course is 16 weeks with approximately three hours of online and offline activities per week.

Audience: The primary audience for these two courses is K-3 teachers, but principals, reading specialists, media specialists, and K-12 special education teachers have also enrolled in these courses.

My role: I served as the instructional designer for both courses, working closely with subject matter experts in reading. I helped to design templates for the scripts and helped the subject matter experts develop or modify activities for an online format that were often originally designed for face-to-face presentation.

I also ended up researching and encouraging the corporate adoption of an online course management system to deliver the courses to more than 5,000 educators to date. We selected a course management system developed by Alchemy Training Systems in Austin, Texas, and it has become the repository for a variety of online courses on several topics.

Since this was a relatively small contract with the state of Tennessee, I also designed most of the graphics, including selecting color palettes for the modules, and did much of the video shooting and editing.

Challenges: The original pilot course was designed in attempt to provide a venue for K-3 teachers in Tennessee at schools receiving Reading First funds to participate in consistently delivered professional development activities that were cost-effective, embedded in their daily practice, and sustained over a long period of time.

With the primary audience being faculties at schools with students performing at the lowest levels of reading proficiency in the state, it was assumed that the course content had to be highly relevant, engaging, and require little technology skill as schools with large populations of underserved students would most likely have some teachers with very low levels of technology basic skills.

Instructional Design Strategies: While schools in Tennessee had to apply for Reading First funds in order to receive the online professional develpoment, a basic assumption was that there would be low motivation to take an online course due to the many pressures placed upon these teachers to improve their students' achievement. This work was shaped by two major factors: 1) corporate instructional design guidelines (in which I served as the chair of the committee that developed the guidelines), and 2) John Keller's ARCS model of motivational design.

• Internal corporate instructional design guidelines emphasized the development of professional learning communities and the incorproation of strategies that reflected the learning prefernces of adults (andragogy). These principals were reflected in numerous design elements including
  • The use of second person and a tone that respected the maturity of the individuals participating in the training and treated them as professionals that brought rich experiences and knowledge to the experience.
  • The adoption of a "group self-paced" model that honored the context and commitments of individual learning communities that could then progress through the training at their own pace. The dismal success rate of strict self-paced online instruction on a global level encouraged me to advocate for group participation.
  • Color use, amount of text presented, and the development of consistent iconic and layout elements that helped the users to focus on the material deemed essential in contrast to material provided for enrichment.
  • For most modules, activities were designed to follow a three-part arc that required participants to
    1. reflect on their own experiences, often gathering data from their current practice
    2. react to new knowledge that may conflict with or expand upon their current practice or understandings
    3. synthesize their current practice with the new knowledge and skills presented in the modul
• The ARCS acronym stands for Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. Numerous web-based references exist to detail the entire model. In this case, the following design elements represent each stage of the model:
  • Attention. Graphic and video elements were designed to capture the users attention and draw them to pertinent elements of the content. Key concepts and skills were presented in relation to student performance of the users' own classroom, which ties in to relevance.
  • Relevance. Key findings from research including statistics and other data can be droll when read online. In the case of these courses, the data was framed in light of each learning community's own student performance.
  • Confidence. Examples, whether text- or video-based, were drawn from real schools similar to those in the training that had overcome hurdles that the participating schools would more than likely face.
  • Satisfaction. Successful completion of the course was related to the completion of group-based activities that allowed the community to review their own data, reflect on their own performance, and form plans of action relevant to their own students. Tests were actually learning opportunities that promoted reflection rather than serving as punitive action.

Outcomes: The first course was received positively by an overwhelming number of the participants, despite the new web-based format and some low technology proficiencies reported by participants. Numerous participants that completed the first course actually requested a second course. How often do we get requests for more professional development? Several school districts expanded their participation to teachers in grades 4 and 5 and other schools not eligible for Reading First funds. To date, more than 5,000 educators in the state of Tennessee have taken one of the two online courses developed for the Comprehensive Literacy Classroom.

An independent review of the first course offered reported that teachers receiving the online training demonstarted significant gains in knowledge and skills based upon pre- and posttest measures of objective-based assessments for each module. A survey of the community leaders reported that they felt the online courses were a successful method of meething the professional development needs of both new and returning teachers.

A study of the cost of the online delivery showed a significant savings when compared to face-to-face delivery. For a sample of 896 participants, the cost for online delivery was estimated to be approximately $87 per person as compared to a cost of approximately $438 per person if delivered in a comparable three-day, face-to-face workshop. The cost per person decreases significantly as the number of participants increases. Delivering the course to 3,500 participants could cost as low as $31 per person, and since we have delivered it to more than 5,000 participants, our overall costs per person have been minimal.

Web site: www.epd.edvantia.org (You can view a sample course about distance learning, but not the Comprehensive Literacy Program.)

For more information: Read the peer-reviewed article, Reading Teachers First, from a presentation at the 2004 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference.