Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that a discussion of Design Elements for
Training Adult Educators to Teach Online is scheduled for next week,
June 15 - 22, 2009 on the Adult Literacy Professional Development (PD)
List. Please join us, and share the announcement below with those who
you think may be interested.

 

Thank you,

 

Jackie Taylor, PD List Facilitator, jackie at jataylor.net 

 

 

Design Elements for Training Adult Educators to Teach Online

 

Dates:            June 15 - 22, 2009

Where:           Adult Literacy Professional Development ("PD")
Discussion List

To Participate, subscribe (free):
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/Professionaldevelopment 

 

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 Adult Literacy Professional Development List to explore these
and related issues in designing online professional development.

 

 

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. David is the founder of the Adult Literacy Online
Professional Developers (ALOPD) group that produced the design elements
guide we will be discussing.

 

 

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 Online Teaching. The tool was shared at the AALPD
PreConference at COABE and with other staff development professionals
for further feedback and revision.

 

Now, the Adult Literacy 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 Online Teaching:

*         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. 

 

To participate in the discussion, subscribe (free): 

http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/Professionaldevelopment

 

 

 

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