Guests:

Crystal Hack, Director, GED-i Project
Crystal Hack is the director of a nationally used online GED test preparation curriculum and the associated professional development for teachers, administrators, and coordinators.

Leslie Petty , Associate Director, Project IDEAL Support Center, University of Michigan
Leslie Petty is the Associate Director of the Project IDEAL Support Center. Project IDEAL is a consortium of states interested in exploring the potential of distance learning to serve adult learners. Project IDEAL provides technical support, resources, professional development and other services for member states.

David J. Rosen, President, Newsome Associates
Adult literacy and technology, including online learning and online professional development, have been major themes of David’s work for more than two decades.

Description:

Issue: Currently there are very few adult literacy education teachers who have been trained to do online teaching. If online or blended learning significantly expands, there will be a "labor shortage" of these teachers. What design elements are key to developing online professional development for training distance education instructors? Join the Professional Development List to explore these and related issues in designing online professional development.

Background on Topic:

In January 2009, a small “work group” of about 20 dedicated professionals from the Adult Literacy Professional Development List (one of the Institute’s national Communities of Practice) formed the “Adult Literacy Online Professional Development” (ALOPD) group. The ALOPD group, a smaller community of practice specific for grappling with online professional development issues, addressed the question, What design elements are key to developing online professional development for training distance education instructors? As a result, they wrote the guide Online Professional Development Design Elements for Adult Educators New to Teaching Online. The tool was shared at the AALPD PreConference at COABE and with other staff development professionals for further feedback and revision.

Now, the Professional Development List has invited the ALOPD to share and discuss their work, questions, and considerations for designing online professional development. If you did not have the opportunity to join the ALOPD group OR if you are interested in learning more about designing online professional development, this discussion is for you.

Recommendations to Prepare:

Please review parts or all of Online Professional Development Design Elements for Adult Educators New to Teaching Online:

• Part I: http://home.comcast.net/~djrosen/Design_Elements.pdf
• Part II: http://home.comcast.net/~djrosen/Design_Elements.1.pdf

Guest Biographies:

Crystal Hack, Director, GED-i Project
The GED-i Project provides comprehensive professional development online and at a distance. We ground the professional development in research-based delivery and emphasize job embedded skill development, networking with peer groups, and use of teacher leaders. We provide GED-i Professional Development through online chats, conference calls, online list discussions, email, discussion boards, and self-paced modules.

Many times, we offer one type of training in several different delivery methods in order to address the needs of the field and reach a wide audience. For example, we may facilitate an online chat on Marketing the GED-i Program. We may also offer it as a topic for discussion on a discussion list and a conference call. Participants can register for any, or all, of the delivery methods that meet their schedule and needs. This diversity is well received by the field. As Drue Erjavac, from Northbrook, Illinois, shared about the self-paced modules, “I like taking the online development because I can work at my own pace and review and revisit the information in the Units.”

The foundation of all GED-i Professional Development begins with a single question: What is the goal (or goals) of the training? The content we present is our most important consideration, and we carefully adapt the content to the correct distance learning method.

Leslie Petty, Associate Director, Project IDEAL Support Center, University of Michigan
Project IDEAL is a consortium of states interested in exploring the potential of distance learning to serve adult learners. Project IDEAL provides technical support, resources, professional development and other services for member states. Project IDEAL offers:

• Distance professional development options for teachers in member states; being a distance learner helps teachers better understand some of the challenges their students, studying at a distance, may face
• Cross-state professional development opportunities where teachers build their professional networks
• A hybrid introductory course for agencies new to distance learning, beginning with a day-long face-to face session and continuing online
• Several online study groups for experienced distance teachers; these typically begin with a conference call
• A website for each member state that they can use to build a community of practice by conducting online discussions and sharing resources

Project IDEAL strives to make the technology serve the instructional needs, rather than being the driving force for the professional development.

David J. Rosen, President, Newsome Associates
I was the Director of the Adult Literacy Resource Institute/SABES Greater Boston Regional Support Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 1986 to 2003. Now, as an education consultant, I provide assistance to: the Health Care Learning Network in Massachusetts and Rhode Island for the design and evaluation of an online and face-to-face learning system for incumbent workers in hospitals and nursing homes; the McDonald’s Corporation, as an advisor for English Under the Arches, a distance education ESOL program for immigrant restaurant workers; and Portland State University (Oregon) as a Regional implementation Advisor for the national Learner Web demonstration project. I am also a discussion moderator for Special Topics discussion list sponsored by the National Institute for Literacy. In the past I helped California’s CALPRO to put face-to-face PD workshops online.

I am the creator of The Literacy List, Harnessing Technology to Serve Adult literacy, and Adult Literacy Education Software Recommendations (http://newsomeassociates.com) and I write the Web Scan column for the ABEL journal. I am one of the co-founders of the Adult Literacy Education Wiki, and am the founder of the Adult Literacy Online Professional Developers (ALOPD) group that produced the document we will be discussing.

Last updated: Friday, 05-Jun-2009 15:02:06 EDT