May 2000 — Features
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Involving Teachers in Web-Based Professional Development
After directing one or two of these activities ourselves, we ask teachers themselves to come up with others. Rather than using these icebreaker activities at the beginning of the semester, when their effectiveness is limited by the lack of real context, we use them after the teachers have had a chance to build some familiarity and shared experience. The result has been a sudden and marked increase in the level and quality of participation and collaboration as teachers become more comfortable showing their work and sharing their ideas with their peers.
A particular advantage of the AVF program is that it allows learners to work in small teams, a format particularly useful for building close collaboration. We have found, however, that it is very important to control the composition and direction of the teams when they are first formed. After a few weeks of class, when we have gotten to know something about the teachers and their work, we set up teams to balance individual strengths and abilities. We typically group teachers based on shared interests, as this provides a foundation for collegial sharing. At the same time, we try to place the strongest teachers in separate teams, so that they can provide good models for their teammates.
As the semester progresses, we have the teams move from simple sharing of teaching practices to more collaborative consultation. As an intermediate step, we like to have team members suggest approaches for their peers before, rather than after completing their own work. For example, we may ask team members to suggest assessment procedures for their colleagues to use before thinking about what methods they will use themselves. In this way they can give meaningful suggestions without critiquing their teammates’ work, and can incorporate peer suggestions into the initial stages of their own planning.
As the teachers continue their work in teams, we eventually expect them to give full critiques and suggestions to one another in their Web activities. Instructors model these responses in feedback via e-mail and in commentary in the Web team spaces. Increasingly, the feedback we give is less detailed and evaluative, as we turn responsibility over to team members for providing feedback and direction. We may point to particular peers whose work may be instructive, but as the teachers begin to follow instructor models this becomes less necessary. We even see individuals adopting particular phrasing they have seen in instructor feedback, e.g. “This makes a good start, but you could use some more specific detail in this part of your planning...” At this point, we can step into a role as true facilitators, structuring activities and giving suggestions that advance collaboration and self-instruction.
Conclusion
In order for distance education to be effective in professional development, instructional planning must consider the gap between the typical teacher’s expectations about the learning process and the capabilities and characteristics of instruction over distance. Careful, gradual introduction of Web-based technologies can guide and enhance learners’ transition from a traditional model of pedagogy in which their role is passive, to a model in which they take a full, active role in directing and achieving their own learning.
