Effective Professional Development #VWBPE

Another liveblog from the Vitual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference taking place in the 3D VW, Second Life. Becky Adams, University of New Mexico (Elli Pinion in Second Life) talked about You Don’t Have To Go To Space for Effective PD! [Professional Development]. After an introduction, she described her research about professional development for school teachers, which had helped them develop the principles for PD in the photo below. They ran a part-time course, and researched the teachers' perceptions of its impact. The data they collected consisted of interviews, focus groups, reflective journals kept by the teachers and VLE logs.
The results were positive: "There was a significant change in attitude about PD “I find online professional development to be socially engaging,” and “I believe this learning opportunity has affected my classroom” and they reported they spent more time than they had anticipated." The course sounded well-designed, and the students were sharing their experiences and ideas, and trying things out in their work as they went along. Important was that "the PD was meaningful to them, and had continuity; It was convenient, they could do it around their schedules and responsibilities". Having an engaged leader who set the agenda as regards "timing, responsibilities, deadlines and motivation for follow through" was important to the teachers.

Adams also talked about setting up a Community of Practice approach in her university, to develop their ability to teach online. The effective approach was inviting people personally to talk about their experience on a specific theme for 5 minutes. This brought people along and they sometimes brought a friend. She also talked about how they got faculty to engage with a rubric for online courses, by instituting an award for Online Course Best Practices which counted in their yearly evaluations.
Adams identified the key principles for PD on the slide I've posted above, and said how they'd applied them to a course about teaching online: the course was online; "It happened over time [6 weeks], so they could reflect and revisit concepts"; it was interactive; "we had them build their first few modules as they took the class, so they applied what they were learning"; it was meaningful because they were applying what they learned at once; there was just one synchrnous session, so they could plan the learning conveniently to them and they had a tutor who led the class and modeled online teaching.
The recording of her talk is here:  https://youtu.be/KenWuuVO5rY