Designing High-Quality Online Professional Development in Systems-Based High School Biology for Greater Geographic Reach

• In Event: A New Generation of Goals for Scientific Modeling: Strategies and Lessons Learned for Reach and Impact

Abstract

Purpose/Significance. There is a need to increase access to high-quality professional development (PD) for a more diverse set of science teachers (Wilson, 2013). Recent reports on the lack of high-quality teacher PD suggest that time and space are issues influencing scale (e.g., Merritt, 2016; Peltola et al., 2017). While online PD has the potential to mitigate these issues, little is known about best practices for online PD (Dede et al., 2009) and especially how online PD can address particular challenges in working with systems modeling tools (Author, 2017). This project seeks to modify a successful face-to-face PD (Author, 2017) for online distribution in order to increase reach and explore the needs of teachers in diverse settings. The PD successfully supported teachers in implementing models built in StarLogo Nova to teach biology through a complex-systems lens.

Theoretical Framework. We build on research that positions teachers as knowers and agents of change (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) where they are active participants in building their own knowledge rather than passive recipients (Fenstermacher, 1994). The literature also shows that social learning and collaboration can increase knowledge creation and sharing in an online space (e.g., Booth, 2012; Duncan-Howell, 2010) and especially through guidance and continued support for technology-enhanced inquiry science PD (Gerard et al., 2011). Additionally, results from the face-to-face version of this PD highlighted the importance of flexibility as well as just-in-time support for teachers to develop adaptive expertise (Author 2015, 2017).

Methods. This presentation reports on the pilot year of the online version of this PD course in which eight high-school teachers participated beginning summer of 2018 through the 2018-2019 school year. Teachers from the face-to-face version of the PD worked as co-designers and experts in the course videos for the online version. The course lasted for six weeks, during which the participating teachers asynchronously completed the assigned materials and posted in-course discussion boards. Three follow-up video calls throughout the school year were also conducted. Teachers were interviewed at the end of the summer course and again at the end of the school year. The data presented here is drawn from those calls and interviews, all of which were recorded and transcribed.

Findings/Conclusions. Results of the pilot run of the online PD were overwhelmingly positive, with all of the participating teachers implementing a significant portion of the complex-systems curriculum using StarLogo Nova. The teachers spoke positively about the videos of the expert teachers and how access to expertise helped them feel supported during implementation. Teachers also discussed the importance of readily implementable resources from teachers they could trust. We posit that the success of the online PD was primarily influenced by three characteristics: 1) anywhere anytime access to professional knowledge; 2) modeling of instructional approaches using computational tools; and 3) peer-constructed and vetted activities. We are confirming these qualities for asynchronous online PD with nearly 300 teachers who will be taking the course in the summer of 2019.

Authors

• Katherine M Miller, University of Pennsylvania

• Susan A. Yoon, University of Pennsylvania

• Daniel Wendel

• Ilana Schoenfeld

• David Reider, Education Design

• Emma Anderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology