“Why CE Credits Online?” you might ask.
With the shift in learning patterns and the prevalence of technology, administrators and educators can now find online learning available everywhere—from the university to online websites. How then does the administrator and educator become a discerner of quality online professional development? What does one look for? What does quality online professional development look like? It is more than the traditional correspondence course with printed text online. It is more than sitting in a seat and viewing a video. As more online professional development options become available, it is imperative to become a discerning consumer. For the online experience to effect change in educators’ practices and behaviors, there must be
- components for practice and rehearsal of skills—for implementation;
- printed text, scenarios, real-world examples—diverse adult learning experiences—as well as and streaming video for modeling and visualization of instruction;
- self-assessments and final assessments to gauge the progress of the learning;
- opportunities for reflecting on the new learning and its implementation;
- built-in occasions for feedback on the new learning and its implementation;
- measures for gathering and examining data to validate the progress of professional learning;
- time for the investment in technology infrastructures, training, and applied learning to “pay off”;
- responsiveness to educators’ needs, both in content and technically;
- opportunities for educators to develop and participate in cultures of continuous change—so that they can prepare students to adapt to a world where knowledge and learning and attendant skills rapidly change; and
- time for interaction and collaboration with colleagues, both online and off line.
CE Credits Online provides such professional learning and support through the following measures:
- Educators are immediately engaged in the new learning, since the course work is job-embedded.
- Educators find the courses timely and relevant, since their learning focuses on the skills that they are already doing: planning, delivering, assessing.
- Districts have standardized, consistent presentations with multi-modality learning and modeling via processes of show, tell, do, reflect, and receive feedback.
- Individual educators receive one-to-one feedback in the electronic classroom on what they are doing in their classroom.
- The work of the courses is skill-building, with a focus on the State’s content standards.
- Educators learn to think about what, why and how they teach and assess (Wiggins’ enduring understanding and essential questions).
- Educators learn to look at multiple sources of their students’ data as an indicator of what to teach and assess and a measure of how their students are progressing with the new learning.
- Educators have a resource of research-based best practices that is theirs perpetually and as handy as a click away.
- Educators develop professional learning communities as they work and dialog with partners or teams.
- The learning is sustained and ongoing over a semester, solidifying the learning experiences to change educators’ behaviors and practices.
- The professional development occurs when and where the educators find it convenient.
- Educators remain in their workplace/classroom for professional development, using instructional time to rehearse/apply their intentional best practices from the new learning.
- Online learning is cost and time effective to districts.
- Using the coaching format, research tells us, ensures the maximum opportunity for educator learning and teacher retention.
Why join the growing numbers of administrators who are leading in a shift of their professional development paradigms to include learning that has all of the benefits of face-to-face training, plus some additional ones? Why not, especially when professional development is
- flexible, and responsive to district needs,
- when it aligns with and supports other initiatives, and
- when it frees up administrators’ time to deepen and solidify the learning experiences through professional learning communities.
Dr. Jamie McKenzie (1998), president of From Now On, writes:
The best way to win widespread use of new technologies is to provide just-in-time support . . . assistance and encouragement when needed. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now! . . . We need less training and more learning. Many schools are finding success when professional growth and development occurs daily . . . just in time. Real learning takes place (or stops) when actually trying the new skills. Just as the teacher is apt to experience surprise, frustration and disillusionment, support must be close at hand. (p. 2)*
*McKenzie, J. (1998, April). Creating learning cultures with just-in-time support. E-School News, April 1998. Retrieved from http://staffdevelop.org/adult.html.
CE Credits Online © 2006