The Development of an Online Learning Community for Middle and High School Math Teachers in the Madi

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The Development of an Online Learning Community
for Middle and High School Math Teachers in the
Madison Metropolitan School District

• By Jeff Ziegler

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Background

• Teacher professional development tends to be
• Imposed by administration
• Not helpful to teachers
• Not aligned with best practice

• Teacher professional development should be
• What teachers want to learn about
• Helpful to teachers
• Aligned with best practice

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• One way to make professional development what it
  should be is through professional learning
  communities
• Professional learning communities offer teachers
  the opportunity to
• Learn what they find useful
• Reflect upon their practice
• Get the support they need to grow as professionals

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The Literature Says

• Teachers learn best when they are actively
  involved in the process
• Opportunities to reflect on practice needs to be
  part of the process
• Reflection needs to be combined with open
  discussion
• Online discussions can be more reflective than
  face-to-face discussions

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The Goal of My Project

• Develop an online learning community for middle
  and high school math teachers
• Provide an opportunity for these teachers to
• Discuss what the research says about best
  practice
• Reflect upon and discuss their current practice
• Support each others professional growth

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Design of the Course

• The ADDIE Model
• Analysis
• Design
• Development
• Implement
• Evaluate

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Analysis

• Time constraints did not allow a traditional
  needs assessment
• I relied on years of experience in the district
  to know the priorities and the need for
  professional development

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Design

• The Blackboard course management system provided
  the environment for online discussions
• Each week focused on a different topic
• The order of the topics was chosen to guide
  discussion from general ideas of differentiation
  to specific strategies

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Development

• Journal articles chosen to promote discussion
  were delivered using documents feature of
  Blackboard
• Announcements feature was used to introduce each
  weeks topic and provide other important
  information
• Discussion feature was used to provide a prompt
  for each weeks discussion and for the discussion
  itself

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Implementation

• Informed teachers of course through district
  website and email
• Personnel at district office handled registration
• Login information was sent to each registered
  participant by email
• Prepare Blackboard for start of course

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Evaluation

• My assessment of success or failure of the course
  to meet the goal of creating an online learning
  community
• Survey of participants to determine satisfaction
  with course

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Results and Conclusions

• Participation was low
• 8 teachers started the course and 3 finished
• Possible reasons for low participation
• Three teachers were left off the roster
• Participants lack of experience with online
  courses
• Lack of critical mass
• Lack of motivation on participants part
• Participants lack of commitment to each other

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Lessons Learned for Next Time

• Need a hook to motivate participants
• Have a face-to-face meeting at start of course to
  generate a feeling of commitment amongst the
  participants
• Pay close attention to administrative details