Week 5_Evaluating Online Teachers_Teaching Perspectives Survey Results

With an overarching weekly goal of determining how to evaluate online teachers, we began week 5 by doing a self-assessment of our own teaching perspectives at http://www.teachingperspectives.com/ .  The survey broke the strenghts of our beliefs, intentions and actions into five main categories:

Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturance, and Social Reform

Key Question:  Did the results of your TPI fit your image of yourself as a teacher?

The results of the survey did meet my self-image as a teacher.  First and foremost, I was pretty balanced in all caterogies and not truly dominant (or recessive) in any category.  That more or less fits my personality and other types of surveys I have always taken about myself.

My strongest ratings came in the Transmission and Developmental Perspectives (although all of the first four categories were within 6 points of each other).  Having had nine years of consulting Civil Engineering experience before becoming a teacher (I have also been teaching for nine years), I consider myself a pretty strong practitioner in terms of knowing my content (mathematics) and its applications in the real-world.  I feel like I have a well-rounded understanding of the curriculum and do a good job of sharing that with my students.  The developmental perspective was also fairly strong.  My growth over the last nine years has mostly been in effective questioning and understanding content from a students perspective (apprenticeship).  

There is, however, signficant room for growth in my abilitiy to communicate objectives and content to my students.  Effective communication can take place f2f or through various media.  As a "brick and mortar" teacher most of that communications comes in the form of me modeling to classrooms of about 25 student and follow up conversations through groupwork and written communication through assessments. 

So, would my communication be more effective or more difficult as an online teacher?

Which leads us to our 2nd Key Question:
Interestingly, the main low scoring category was social reform 


Do you think the TPI results are different for the same person teaching online and face-to-face?

I think the TPI results for the same person teaching online versus face-to-face would be more or less the same but I think it would really too hard to adequately tell what type of online teacher you would be until you had actually did it for a significant amount of time.  To relate to my self-analysis above and how I think my perspectives would translate to becoming an online teacher, I am pretty sure I would first focus on my strengths.  I would work very hard to develop clear objectives and a solid systematic approach to learning Algebra or whatever topic I would be teaching.  I think, ideally, if I was provided a solid curriculum that I could modify to make my own I could really transition nicely in terms of the transmission and developmental perspectives.  In fact, I thnk I could develop some excellent essential questions and differentiate to different learners pretty well.  As far as communication, the "stuff" I would want to communicate to my students could be laid out pretty nicely.

However, I think the ability to communicate effectively using new media would be very challenging.  That seemed to be the general theme of our analysis this week about effective online teaching.  I am not sure I know what it would look like and I am not convinced there are many reliable exemplars to learn from just yet.  I am sure there are bits and pieces of excellent work, but what I am talking about is a long-term full course example of excellent teaching and learning using new media.  Something that could be used for P.D. that I could take and bring back to my classroom and be supported on.  I think these types of models need to be developed, peer reviewed, and critiqued know that it is new and should be changing and plays a role as ground-breaking and a work in progress. 

Finally, to speak to the other nurturing and social reform perspectives for the survey I have not mentioned in this blog, I think those would be very difficult for me to develop rapidly.   I scored relatively low in nurturing, although I consider that somewhat of a strength for me.  However, my nurturing presents itself in those follow-up discussions, tutoring after school, and the one-on-one interactions that come often outside of the classroom but within the school building. 

How could I implement those important aspects of teaching online.  To  me those teacher-student relationships develop in the long-term.  With some students it takes me a full year to develop a more meaningful relationship. I think it would be challenging online.  I also think the motivation element of teaching would be pretty difficult to develop.  However, if the course work was truly differentiated and personalized, that could be done online even better than it possibly does in the classroom.
    



That

Wk4_Instructional Design_How should an online lesson look?

What did you learn about the design of online courses this week that will affect how you think about this form of instruction in the future?     

The majority of what I saw through my investigation of online course design left me searching for more.  To be honest, it was exactly what I expected.  In my classroom, I have frequently used http://www.explorelearning.com/ which takes advantage of a dynamic visual environment to allow student to investigate concepts using sliders, etc. on a coordinate plane or perhaps doing other interactive investigations.  This is an improvement of what I see in many math classrooms where many teachers are stuck in the "static" 2-d world of writing on the board.  The explorelearning "gizmos" are very similar to what I saw on the sample lessons for K12.  In addition to them being more visual and taking advantage of seeing things move, the explorelearning lessons and the k12 lessons seemed to have pretty well-crafted step by step investigations that help a student walk through an investigation and make observations (kind of like a scientist) to learn something new.  I think this element should be taken advantage of in instructional design.

I am  trying to spin it forward, to some extent for k12 because they got mainly poor design comments (even one from me) but the sole fact that there are sample lessons to view has to earn them some Kudos.  My poking around with VHS, the CO state school I originally investigated, and a couple of other schools had me clicking away to find no sample lessons are activities.

So, let me summarize what I saw that I consider good:

Alignment/Transparency - Even though some materials were dry in their presentation, the lessons and scope and sequences (I took a look at several course sequences) were very clearly stated.  A lot of the grading elements were also very clear.  As a parent or academic advisor I appreciate this.  

Some research has gone into the materials.  I found no content errors or misleading activiites.  I also liked the prerequisite skills checked before each lesson.  This is sound instruction.

Areas for improvement:

True "Digital Media".  Needs to break out of the mold of cute pictures with simple cartoons that move to something more.   

True interaction.  I know many courses are asynchronous, but even some kind of real-time assessments for understanding or somehow being connected to others in a learning community needs to be implemented.

The challenge is getting the best sequenced and assessed curricula (pretty achieveable goal) somehow enriched by dynamic, interactive media, that connects communities of learners.  

Week 3_tweeting questions about K12 as an option for my child

Given the limitations of a 140-character tweet the following is what I would ask a K12, Inc. representative if I were investigating one of their schools as an option for  my daughter:

Explain how k12 curriculum is the gold standard across all disciplines?

How will my child get student to student interaction, social opportunities through k12?

Week 2_Choosing an online school_parents perspective

Limited to 140-characters, the following is what I would "tweet" to find out more about online opportunities for my daughter:

Teacher Feedback hrs/week?

Checking Assignments do I have instant grade access?

Will course meet prereqs for following courses?

Dropping option?  If so, deadline?