Develop Your Staff
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Professional development activities that have proven effective will be included in Develop Your Staff. Your contributions are welcome. Send articles to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Preparing to Deliver Virtual Learning
The following resources provide guidelines and ideas for preparing teachers to deliver virtual learning.
Standards for Online Teaching and Learning |
North American Council for Online Learning. (2007). National standards of quality for online courses. Vienna, VA: NACOL. http://www.inacol.org/resources/nationalstandards/ North American Council for Online Learning. (2008). National standards for quality online teaching. Vienna, VA: NACOL. http://www.inacol.org/resources/nationalstandards/ Southern Regional Education Board. (2006). Standards for quality online teaching. Atlanta, GA: SREB. Read more (PDF) > |
Davis, Niki, & Rose, Ray. (2007). Professional Development for Virtual Schooling and Online Learning. Research Committee Issues Brief. Vienna, VA: North American Council for Online Learning. http://www.inacol.org/resources/docs/NACOL_PDforVSandOlnLrng.pdf
This brief debunks five myths related to professional development to support virtual schooling:
- Virtual schools and regular school counselors can handle the few participating students without leadership support.
- Any regular classroom teacher is already qualified to teach online.
- Any highly qualified face-to-face classroom teacher is ready to teach a quality online course that has previously been prepared or purchased.
- Virtual schooling will fit with regular school routines and practices. The technology coordinator and counselor will provide any professional development necessary.
- Newly qualified teachers who learn about virtual schooling in their preservice programs will be ready to teach online when they graduate.
The authors suggest the following actions:
- Recruit and develop faculty to provide professional development related to virtual schooling.
- Integrate virtual schooling in preservice and professional development programs for teachers, their leaders and education service providers
- Differentiate professional development for online teachers according to need, role, culture and context.
Kearsley, Greg, & Blomeyer, Robert. Preparing K-12 Teachers to Teach Online. http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/TeachingOnline.htm. A version of this paper appeared in Educational Technology magazine, Jan-Feb 2004.
Kearsley and Blomeyer outline personal and professional qualities of effective online teachers. Their artiicle offers additional information about teacher preparation.
- Be proficient using the basic elements of online courses: e-mail, threaded discussions, real-time conferencing (chats)
- Be able to describe the characteristics of successful distance learners
- Be able to evaluate the quality of online learning programs
- Be able to explain the ethical and legal issues associated with online education
- Be able to explain the accessibility issues associated with online education
- Be able to describe strategies for integrating online and classroom instruction
- Provide timely and meaningful feedback
- Create learning activities that engage students
- Ensure students interact with each other
- Encourage students to be critical and reflective
- Use techniques for effective online teaching, including student-centered activities, facilitation and moderating, problem-based learning, collaborative learning, and peer evaluation.
