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April 15, 2003
Build and Teach a Successful Online Course (cont'd)
Professional Development: The Benefits of Going Online
By Margo Nanny and Nicolette Toussaint
A San Francisco nonprofit finds Web-based instruction offers advantages over face-to-face training.
The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, an organization working to close the achievement gap in public schools, radically changed their approach to training educators in their Cycle of Inquiry methodology by creating an online course to take the place of in-person offerings. Using the Concord Consortium model on the Blackboard platform, BASRC designed an eight-week class that provides teachers, "reform coaches," and administrators with a scientific method for improving classroom practices affecting low-achieving students. After offering the class five times, the following benefits were observed.
Scheduling and attendance problems are eliminated. In the past, professional and family obligations, as well as unpredictable commute times, made it difficult for participants to be in the same place at the same time. Now they can log on from work or home at their convenience.
The fear of "working in isolation" is unfounded. Even though individuals log on at different times, group work is possible. For example, each week participants discuss a case study together in the discussion board. The instructor poses a question and participants respond by posting early in the week; later, they comment on others' posts.
There are advantages to a sight-unseen structure. Talkative students said the asynchronous structure of the course helped them "listen" better and make concise, considered comments. Likewise, shy participants felt their voices were heard more than in face-to-face classes.
Participants act as a support group. Weekly online discussions offered students a chance to relate course material to their work and get feedback from others. A district reading coordinator in Newark, Calif., for example, asked the group for effective diagnostic assessments she could share with parents. A teacher in a nearby city replied that her school already had some and invited the Newark teacher to visit.
The course becomes an ongoing work in progress. Because the class material and discussion boards remain online six months after the course ends, students can go back to answer questions that come up later in their work. This gives the training longevity and allows BASRC to continually make improvements.
Margo Nanny is technology director and Nicolette Toussaint is communications director at BASRC.
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