Poll: Best Practices In Online Teaching Case Studies (Part Two)

Following up on the initial poll this month (see Poll: Best Practices In Online Teaching Case Studies), I wanted to repeat the poll using some of the options folks listed in the “Other” category.

As a reminder, a few years back Iowa State University and a series of partners received some funding to create the Good Practice to Inform Iowa Learning Online’ case studies.  My understanding of the purpose of these case studies was to outline specific issues related to teaching online that virtual school teachers could use as a reference.  If you look at the list of topics, you’ll note that they are very science and very lab-based.  The project that I am outlining would take a more general approach to online teaching and I am wondering what issues related to online teaching you would like to see address.

As such, I would ask that you respond to the poll below.  If there are ones that you feel are still not represented by the current choices, please use the “Other” box to make additional suggestions.

Thanks for participating…

VSS 2009 – Going Virtual III! Effective Professional Development Of K-12 Online Teachers

This was not one of the Live Presentations, just one I came across due to the VSS Overlay and possibly #vss2009 Twitter stream.  The third session that I am blogging from Virtual School Symposium is Going Virtual III! Effective Professional Development of K-12 Online Teachers.

As this was not one of the Live Presentations, I can’t say much about the session.  Someone, somewhere posted a link for what appears to be the project page:

http://edtech.boisestate.edu/goingvirtual/goingvirtual.htm

This page has links to the two previous reports, along with an “in press” version of their Journal of Technology and Teacher Education manuscript.  In addition to this link, Kerry has posted a link on the VSS Overlay to her slides which are available on Slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/krice100/vss2009-going-virtual-iii-final

As best I can tell, the presentation focuses upon a pilot study they conducted in preparation for the phase three data collection.  The information about this third phase largely begins with slide 16/25. These slides mainly focused upon how does one measure effectiveness and what items go (or should go) into that calculation.  I didn’t see anywhere on the slides about when the phase three report might be released, but given that they are still working with pilot study data – and appear to have a lot of questions about effectiveness (which may have all been answered during the presentation, but I don’t know for sure as I wasn’t there) – I would assume that the phase three report is likely a Virtual School Symposium 2010 release.

Poll: Best Practices In Online Teaching Case Studies

Continuing the monthly polling feature, I want to use the next two months as a way to generate some data that will assist in a project that I am currently preparing.  A few years back, Iowa State University and a series of partners received some funding to create the Good Practice to Inform Iowa Learning Online’ case studies.  My understanding of the purpose of these case studies was to outline specific issues related to teaching online that virtual school teachers could use as a reference.  If you look at the list of topics, you’ll note that they are very science and very lab-based.  The project that I am outlining would take a more general approach to online teaching and I am wondering what issues related to online teaching you would like to see address.

As such, I would ask that you respond to the poll below.  Please note that PollDaddy requires at least two responses, so I included two general issues related to online teaching that I could think of, but I am more interested in having folks use the “Other” box to make additional suggestions.

This month (and next) we’ll have a two part poll.  About half way through the month I’ll take everyone’s responses and create a new poll to see how popular each of your suggestions are.  Thanks for participating…

Virtual School Teaching Internships

I guess this is kind of a Florida Virtual School (FLVS) themed few days.  As I was exploring the FLVS website yesterday for the FLVS: Completed Research Projects entry, I came across a page marked “University Partnerships“.

http://www.flvs.net/areas/aboutus/Pages/UniversityPartnerships.aspx

The page itself describes FLVS’s openness to partnerships with universities and states:

These collaborations include grant partnerships, research opportunities, professional development for teachers and pre-service teacher observation/internship opportunities in our virtual classrooms.

What is interesting is that immediately following that statement is a section that is specifically devoted to:

Pre-Service Teacher Program
The demand for online education is growing and FLVS’s pre-service teacher program is the most innovative in education today. There is no other place where education majors can work in an online classroom. According to NACOL ‘s “Keeping Pace” report, 44 states have online learning programs. A Sloan Consortium report estimated 1,030,000 students engaged in online courses. This was a 47% increase from 2005-2006. Faced with the fast-paced expansion of online education, FLVS decided to open this school in an effort to help education majors prepare for the 21^st century classroom.

We offer opportunities for students to complete their observation requirements in our classrooms along with internship placement up to 14 weeks in the classroom of a clinically-trained, supervising teacher. Please click here to see pre-service teachers’ work and reflections of their time spent in our classrooms.

The presentation is worth the 5 to 8 minutes to takes to watch.  Anyway, this got me wondering how many other virtual school programs have relationships with teacher education programs where they are allowing pre-service teacher education students to complete their student teaching or teaching internships (whichever terms you happen to use) in a virtual school.  And when I use these terms I am not thinking about a teaching practicum that often comes earlier in the program to give students some exposure to the classroom (brick-and-mortar or virtual), maybe even teach a lesson.  I’m thinking of situations where the students spend a full semester doing nothing other than being in a classroom to teach (and in theory be mentored into that role in some systematic way).

I’m going to assume that the FLVS example has something to do with the University of Central Florida program that I last discussed in the entry Student Teaching Online.  And I know that the Teacher Education Goes into Virtual Schooling (TEGIVS) program at Iowa State University also has an internship component (and it dawns on me that when I examine the TEGIVS tag for this blog I have never written an entry totally devoted to the TEGIVS program, so I’m going to have to change that).  In addition, I do know of a number of other programs that do have the practicum components where students get exposed to virtual schooling, its environment and have some limited opportunities to teach.

So, are there other university programs or virtual schools out there that do similar kinds of student teaching or teaching internship program?

Article – Learning to Teach Online: What Works for Pre-service Teachers

I saw this in my RSS feed yesterday – Journal of Educational Computing Research – New Issue Alert from Educational Research Journals.  One of the articles listed in the latest issue was:

Journal of Educational Computing Research
Issue: Volume 40, Number 3 / 2009
Pages: 357 – 376

Learning to Teach Online: What Works for Pre-service Teachers

Heather E. Duncan, University of Wyoming
John Barnett, University of Western Ontario

Abstract: While opportunities for online learning are increasing in K-12 education, few teacher education programs include courses on online teaching and learning. Using Garrison and Anderson’s (2003) Community of Inquiry framework, this qualitative study explored the educational experiences of pre-service teachers in an experiential online course designed to teach about online teaching. Students explored aspects of online education and created a multi-media teaching module. The study highlighted the need for pre-service teacher education programs to design learning experiences that equip the next generation of teachers with the skills required to teach 21st century students in a variety of media that accommodate a diversity of learning styles.

I took a quick look in my library’s online holdings and was able to access the article right away.  The “Purpose of the Study” section on page 359 reads:

This empirical study followed a unique, experiential, online course for pre-service educators, the objective of which was to introduce them to online teaching. Using a social constructivist approach to teaching and learning with technology, the aim was to create a community of inquiry that focused on engagement of participants in the educational experience through interaction, collaboration, and reflection.

The purpose of this study was first to explore the educational experience of pre-service student teacher participants as they learned about teaching and learning online. The focus was in three areas using Garrison and Anderson’s Community of Inquiry framework: these areas were the cognitive domain, the social domain, and the teaching domain (Garrison & Anderson, 2003; Garrison & Vaughan, 2008). The second objective was to dialogue and reflect with students on how to improve the online educational experience, and thus contribute to the ongoing conversation on effective online pedagogy.

The research questions guiding this study were:

1. What are the educational experiences of pre-service teachers in an online course on online teaching?
2. What can instructors do to enhance the online learning experience for students?

Looks to be interesting and fairly unique.  The only major research that had been done in this area to date has been the work by Teacher Education Goes into Virtual Schooling folks.