November/December 2003

Online courses and communities provide ways of delivering professional development and support

By David T. Gordon

The task of providing education professionals with high-quality staff development has taken on fresh urgency since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which mandates improvements in the nation's teaching corps. While much of what passes for in-service training often consists of one-day sessions with little connection to actual classroom goals, research shows that successful professional development is focused sharply on both classroom instruction and content. It is collaborative, intensive, and sustained, giving participants opportunities to examine and critique their own practice and one another's.

Of course, finding the means to develop communities of practice is not enough. Indeed, the greatest barriers may not be logistical or even technological but cultural-an ingrained part of the teaching profession's long-standing culture that favors solo efforts over collaborative ones. But even for those who really do want the sustained, intensive professional development and support that research shows they need, the logistical obstacles can be significant. It takes enormous commitments of resources and time to bring people together in person. Schools have to organize release time, arrange substitute teachers, and find the funds; teachers must coordinate their schedules, organize child care, use the family car, and spend time traveling from home to the setting. There are likely to be fewer choices in traditional course offerings than in online settings. And once a traditional, face-to-face session has finished, there is often little opportunity for follow-up discussion and collaboration.

Early in 2003, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF), a nonpartisan group made up of educators, policymakers, and business leaders, issued a lengthy report that made a strong case for sharpening the expertise of teachers through collegial study and coaching. Titled No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children, the report identified new computer technologies as one potential answer to the logistical question: "Technology provides the means to create and support teachers in learning communities. These communities can be based entirely within a school, providing teachers with a 'place' in which to meet within the busy school day-or they can extend across schools, districts, states, or even nations to provide much broader communities of practice."

NCTAF is not alone in seeing technology as a potentially powerful tool for improving the teaching profession. Writing in the journal Educational Researcher last year, James Hiebert, Ronald Gallimore, and James W. Stigler discuss the need for "a knowledge base [for the teaching profession] that grows and improves." Such a resource, they write, would begin with "practitioner knowledge-the kinds of knowledge practitioners generate through active participation and reflection on their own practice." But it would also be enhanced by contributions from educational research, provided it is relevant to classroom practice. The authors admit that building this knowledge base is no small challenge. Professional knowledge, they argue, must be communicable.

Just as importantly, it must be communicated. And that's where new technologies may make a difference. Thanks to improvements in desktop systems, Internet connections, digital audio and video, web conferencing, and more, the potential for creating a wide-scale professional knowledge base for teachers has never been greater. For example, video case studies of lessons offered through web-based digital libraries are one potentially powerful resource for teachers, as Hiebert, Gallimore, and Stigler point out. Using such libraries in combination with online conferencing and courses could make significant contributions to the development of the professional knowledge base the authors describe.

Online Professional Development

What do such innovations look like in practice? One example of online professional development is the program WIDE World (Wide-scale Interactive Development for Educators), developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to offer training in assessment, curriculum development, integration of new technologies, and the use of educational models such as "Teaching for Understanding" (TfU). Blending the advantages of personal instruction with the flexibility of working on line, students log on for text-based "lectures" and supplementary materials, take part in group activities, and post their work. They form small learning groups of ten, which, led by a coach, organize around participants' interests or goals, levels of expertise, and subject areas. Students get step-by-step feedback from instructors, coaches, and fellow participants, and they benefit from the perspectives of fellow professionals from all over the world. Since WIDE World was formed in 1999, attendees have included teachers and administrators from dozens of countries, including Namibia, Pakistan, and Colombia.

"If the goal is to help practitioners perform better in the real world, then there are remarkable advantages that networked communication technologies offer over traditional professional development," says Martha Stone Wiske, director of Harvard's Education with New Technologies website and one of the organizers of WIDE World. She notes that traditional staff development tends to be delivered in one-shot sessions, which provide no opportunity for teachers to think over what they have learned and follow up with other participants. Also, topics often are chosen by a district and don't quite match teachers' concerns or interests, which goes against what research says is effective in adult education. "Adults want to learn about things that they feel are important. They want some choice, given their competing priorities, over what they learn," says Wiske. "They want to share their expertise with others, and they want to connect that learning to their work."

Unlike a traditional class, where comments and sharing are limited by time, the online course may actually offer more interaction among learners, says Wiske. With a good facilitator the format encourages everyone to exchange comments, debate ideas, share drafts, and discuss classroom experiments. The result, she says, is that "all the expertise of participants and all their emerging insights become a source of energy and a resource for learning that, in face-to-face formats, is hidden."

Challenges and Expectations

For online learning to succeed, participants have to adjust their expectations of what their roles and activities in the class will entail, according to a study of Indiana University's Collaborative Teacher Education Program (CTEP). Published by T.H.E. Journal [Technological Horizons in Education] in 2000, the study focused on K-12 teachers and administrators who were taking CTEP's online professional-development courses for the first time. Participants, most of whom represented rural districts, did field-based activities in their schools, then exchanged documents, traded feedback, and got instruction using web-based conferencing tools.

The experience made those who were used to traditional instruction anxious. Potential roadblocks identified by the authors included the absence of a live instructor, the strangeness of the format, and the new set of tasks that participants were expected to perform. This, added to the prospect of technical snafus, may have made participants wary of online learning.

But the greatest challenge to course participants was to adjust their own expectations of what it means to teach and learn, according to the researchers. The online-learning experience demanded more self-direction and collaborative effort than the teacher-centered model that participants themselves practiced in schools. For that reason, CTEP instructors assumed that a student-directed learning approach was unfamiliar to most teachers and that they had to be shown how to develop independence and take an active role in their own learning.

Online Communities

In addition to formal Internet courses like those offered through WIDE World or CTEP, teachers are finding many new opportunities for informal professional collaboration and exchange through networked technologies. Those faced with isolation and poor development options in their districts can now join one of a growing number of online discussion groups or web communities.

A pioneering example is Tapped In, a project begun in 1995 by the research firm SRI International. Its founders set out to develop "an online education community of practice" where education professionals could network. Each month, some 12,000 teachers and administrators log in to discuss curriculum and practice, take "e-courses" and workshops, plan and conduct projects with colleagues and students, and trade information about every conceivable aspect of schooling.

Teachers may set up their own "personal offices," where they can post electronic portfolios and lesson plans, helpful articles and resources, and even personal photos, anecdotes, favorite quotations, and other items. Organizers also hope to develop a formal library system of web links, articles, and other materials that are posted in these offices or used in e-courses-resources that would be rated by users much the way books are on Amazon.com and other online sites.

"Teachers like this idea a lot because they usually don't get an office at work," says Judi Fusco, Tapped In's director of community activities. "It's much more than a flashy gizmo. It gives them a place to organize their ideas and share their practice with others."

In the Afterschool Online program, 20 or so volunteer teachers staff an online reception area every afternoon, greeting teachers as they log on, answering questions, and offering advice for finding resources. A regular calendar of web events is also available. For example, one discussion group is called "Moving Every Child Ahead: An Alternative Approach to the Goals of No Child Left Behind." The discussion question: "Can we build a community of 'studied interventions' where groups of educators share the evidence they generate through their daily actions with kids?" Another, more lighthearted option is to ask "The Frugal Educator" where to get good classroom materials on the cheap.

At the end of a visit, Tapped In users receive an email with a complete transcript of their online interactions-a take-away, printable record of the advice they gave and received to consult at a later time. Just be careful what you call those online meeting areas: they're not chat rooms. As Fusco says, "Nobody wants to chat. We don't use that word." The message is clear: professionals confer, meet, and discuss; nonprofessionals chat.

In addition to these more casual offerings, Tapped In also provides a portal to formal online courses. For example, Pepperdine University is a "tenant" in the Tapped In "building," offering online courses from its teacher-education program. The benefits have been mutual, says Tapped In founder and director Mark Schlager. In addition to drawing students Pepperdine's way, Tapped In benefits from Pepperdine graduates who continue to use the resource even as they have fanned out into school systems throughout the United States. Other tenants include the Milwaukee public school system, which uses Tapped In for teacher discussions and support.

What's Next?

As technology advances, Tapped In and other nonprofits of its kind are faced with a number of challenges. One is that, while evolving technologies will offer new opportunities to facilitate teacher-to-teacher interaction, there is always a danger that service providers will get out ahead of teachers and their technology capabilities, says Schlager. For instance, live videoconferencing is not yet a practical solution because it requires, among other things, cameras on computers and huge amounts of bandwidth.

But digital video libraries, which don't require the computing power of live video, can already serve as powerful tools for professional learning. For example, visit the California Learning Interchange, a service created by the University of California-Irvine, Apple Computer, and the Orange County public schools. In addition to providing teachers with a variety of tips and web links, the site offers videos of master teachers demonstrating expert classroom instruction, organized by subject area (history, science, English/language arts, etc.), as well as instructional videos about cognitive development, learning theories, multicultural education, and more.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation also offers best-practices videos, as does the North Central Regional Technology in Education ­Consortium, one of ten federally funded regional consortia organized to help K-12 schools implement technology initiatives. UCLA psychologist James W. Stigler, coauthor of the bestselling books The Teaching Gap and The Learning Gap, founded the LessonLab, a for-profit service that provides a digital library with videos demonstrating instructional techniques and classroom management from places like Japan, Hong Kong, and Switzerland, as well as from high-performing U.S. schools. Its customers include the Los Angeles Unified School District. Another for-profit, TeachFirst, also makes online video a staple of its professional development services.

Of course, nagging questions persist. First, research on how effective online courses and communities are in helping improve teachers' practice is anecdotal at best. Second, as foundation and government funding for research projects like Tapped In runs out, how will such communities be sustained? For-profit models, such as Classroom Connect, Lesson Lab, and others-all vying for a slice of the $3 billion K-12 districts will pay this year for professional development-may provide some answers. Or perhaps public-private partnerships like California Learning Interchange will prove to be a better model.

It is clear that the demands of No Child Left Behind have created a sense of urgency to develop effective models of staff development. To meet that mandate, teachers will need richer sources of professional sustenance that are easy to access and offered over the course of their school years and their careers, rather than in one-shot seminars on occasional free Fridays. Technology may be one answer to solving at least the logistics of meeting that challenge. As the NCTAF report No Dream Denied states, "Technology can provide teachers access to the targeted professional resources they need, when and how they need them. Online courses, informal support groups, and other network supported resources open the door to professional development opportunities far beyond what any school or district might be able to offer."

For Further Information

Education with New Technologies. Harvard Graduate School of Education.

J. Hiebert, R. Gallimore, and J.W. Stigler. "A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One?" Educational Researcher 31, no. 5 (2002): 3-15.

G.I. Maeroff. A Classroom of One: How Online Learning Is Changing Our Schools and Colleges. New York: Palgrave/St. Martin's, 2003.

National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children. Washington, DC: Author, 2003.

P. Rodes, D. Knapczyk, C. Chapman, and H. Chung. "Involving Teachers in Web-Based Professional Development." T.H.E. Journal 27, no. 10 (2002): 95-96, 98, 100, 102.

WIDE World (Wide-scale Interactive Development for Educators), c/o Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 124 Mount Auburn St., 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-496-9620; fax: 617-495-9709.

This article is excerpted from Better Teaching and Learning in the Digital Classroom, edited by David T. Gordon and published this month by the Harvard Education Press. Click here to order, or call 800-513-0763.