Online Educator Support: What Works?

Web-based delivery provides a partial solution to meeting the professional development needs of large numbers of science teachers. In addition to serving many users simultaneously, online delivery can reduce barriers related to participant cost, travel distances and time, as well as provide unlimited opportunities to revisit content and instruction. In addition, online approaches allow professional learners to tailor learning experiences to their own individual needs. Consensus has emerged regarding best practices for traditional face-to-face professional development. But questions still remain about how best to structure online courses for science teachers: Which approaches are most engaging to learners? Are different approaches effective with different learner populations? Is participation in an online community essential for professional learning experiences? Two recent sets of studies at Baylor College of Medicine provide evidence that web-based delivery of up-to-date science content and teaching strategies is effective in developing teachers’ content knowledge and abilities to teach inquiry-based lessons. For example, an online, interactive “virtual workshop” on the physical science of water was slightly more effective in developing teachers’ content knowledge, than a live, hands-on workshop on the same topic—as examined in a study with random assignment of participants to the online or live workshop. Other studies used genetics or force and motion as the subject matter to compare the effectiveness of online learning delivered as audio podcasts, streaming video lectures with slides, streaming video lesson demonstrations and online, interactive short courses. The interactive short course formats and online instruction directly related to classroom practices (lesson demonstrations), were found to be most effective for teacher learners, as measured through content knowledge gains by teachers and students. (Funded by National Science Foundation, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH), Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Houston Endowment Inc.)