Designing accessible online learning for diverse educators in Jordan, Iraq, and the United States

• In Event: How teachers learn—making teacher professional development through education technology effective

Proposal

The Steven Initiative Global Solutions Program connects educators in Jordan, Iraq, and the United States to build skills in global competence and design thinking. The U.S. Department of State ECA, Global Education public access online courses equip U.S. educators with foundations and strategies in global competence to apply directly in their classrooms and schools. Through the development of these two programs, the designers have learned valuable lessons about building professional development learning communities where educators gain skills, support and networks to further their careers and improve student achievement.

This year IREX launched Global Education 101 and Foundations of Global Education, public access online professional development for teachers in the United States to learn about global competence and how to globalize their classrooms. This project is under the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program an initiative to reach beyond the teacher leaders and researchers who gain access to the selective programs. IREX knew that teachers learn well in spaces where they are valued and connected, but we grappled with the question, how do we create such an experience online? Utilizing a combination of backwards design and the ADDIE model, IREX engaged in a platform procurement process and a multi-phase instructional design process first creating a collaboration committee of educators to give input on course development, second a targeted outreach initiative where the committee administered a survey with teachers in their building, third an external review committee for the learning plan, and finally a testing committee of educators to engage in coursework once it has been developed. The results have been an accessible MOOC that has engaged over 700 teachers with 100% of those surveyed indicating they would recommend it to a fellow educator.
Four years ago, IREX launched Virtual Innovation Challenge programs for high schools, community colleges, and universities. A key component of the program is an investment in teacher development that includes a blended online training in global competence and design challenge thinking. IREX received a scaling grant to bring the program from 315 students to 3,000 students over two years, and thereby invest in approximately 250 educators in Jordan, Iraq, and the United States. Again, we were faced with the question of how to bring a meaningful in person experience online? IREX engaged in a development process that fused Backwards Design with Lean Impact thinking in order to develop a program design for educators. The program evolved to use accessible low bandwidth professional communication tools such as Slack, Zoom, and Notion and teacher collaboration pairs in combination with differentiated curriculum design to engage and develop educators to support student learning.

A few questions that the presentation will explore in this presentation are;
•How to build community for teacher learning?
•What are best practices for design considerations, parameters and restrictions?
•What is an effective design process?
•How to determine effective models (blended, hybrid, or MOOC) that best fits the audience and program objectives?

Author

• Sarah Huey Bever, IREX