March 13, 2010
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Elizabeth Wolzak, Senior Manager, Instructional Design, PBS TeacherLine
In 2007, PBS TeacherLine launched a professional development growth and collaboration online tool called PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. This ambitious project, made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, is aimed at supporting the work of instructional coaches, mentors, and professional developers based at schools. The person leading the development of this project at PBS TeacherLine is Elizabeth Wolzak, who has been working in close collaboration with AIT’s staff to develop content for the service. Ms. Wolzak was interviewed by AIT’s Director of Education, of Education, Elaine Larson, via email in December.
E.L.: What is the mission of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection, and what are the major goals for the program?
E.W.: PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection is a professional development growth and collaboration tool aimed at supporting the work of instructional coaches, mentors, and school-based professional developers. Eventually PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection will sustain and support the work of professional learning communities. This mission for PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection ties directly to the second Ready To Teach Grant awarded to PBS by the United States Department of Education.
The Dept. of Education has strong interest in fortifying the work of instructional coaches, mentors and professional learning communities. Grant funding was used to research the needs of instructional coaches and mentors and to tap expertise within PBS TeacherLine, which developed and continues to manage over 100 online courses for teacher professional development. PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection was developed applying results of the research and with the goals of the U.S. Dept. of Education and PBS TeacherLine in mind.
How would you describe PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection from the users’ perspective? In other words, how do you see an instructional coach or mentor using PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection?
PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection approaches professional development on two levels. First, the resources help school-based professional developers to be a “guide on the side,” providing suggestions for facilitating adult learning and building a community of learners. Second, it offers a rich library of instructional strategies and resources to draw upon while helping teachers accomplish their professional development goals. To that end, the functionality of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection positions the coach, mentor, or other onsite professional developer as the curriculum expert, able to deliver a unique, customizable coaching experience to each teacher.
Instructional coaches and mentors will engage in what we call the three S’s: Search, Save, and Suggest. PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection allows school-based professional developers to search for resources in our vast library of resources. These resources can be saved, labeled, organized, and commented upon in one dedicated, personal space called “My Resources.” This action alone saves the coach or mentor a huge amount of time. Then, the resources can be found easily, used, and reused. From here, the coach or mentor can craft and send suggestions to the teachers s/he coaches or mentors to meet their professional development needs.
I know that a great deal of research has gone into the development of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection—and that the research is ongoing. Would you please describe that research and what you have learned from it that has informed your development of the service?
Hezel Associates, PBS TeacherLine’s evaluator, conducted a comprehensive series of studies to inform the development effort for PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. These include several formative reviews of wireframes for coaching and mentoring groups, appearance and usability prototypes for PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection, a mentoring and coaching literature review, a coaching and mentoring needs assessment, and finally, a pilot test of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. The literature review included over 40 research studies on instructional coaching and 22 studies on mentoring. The needs assessment was based on hundreds of interviews with facilitators and instructional coaches, teachers, and administrators from across the nation. And, evaluation of prototypes and pilot user testing was conducted over a one-year period across five key states.
The research suggested that instructional coaches provide onsite, job-embedded, continuous professional development, and often do not have enough resources or time to do their jobs properly. It also indicated that instructional coaches frequently are not well trained and prepared to perform their coaching duties. Some instructional coaches are dispersed geographically and can be many miles away from the teachers they coach, making it difficult to meet face to face. Further, the research indicated that schools and districts want “customized professional development solutions” and, while courses may be a helpful part of the solution, they are not the whole solution.
PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection offers: tutorials and support for coaches as they learn how to be a “guide on the side” while facilitating adult learning and building a community of learners; high-quality multimedia resources, such as videos on best practices and research-based articles, in one searchable location along with a system to rate, tag, and comment on all resources within the library; an embedded communication system to easily and quickly access and forward specific resources and customized suggestions to one or more teachers; and/or provide feedback. It supports online communities that bring together coaches, teachers, and practice groups for effective collaboration through discussion boards, resource sharing, and other tools.
How have you developed the content in PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection? What kinds of resources are available to your online learners and from where have these resources come?
In PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection, we deconstructed more than 50 of our courses and extracted the resources or assets within—readings (such as peer reviewed articles and book excerpts), videos, online interactives, and Web sites such as the well-known and respected PBS educational resources—making them accessible to the onsite professional developer to share with the teachers that s/he coaches or mentors.
We packaged these assets into resource sets, known as Coaching Modules, which incorporate both theoretical and practical information to support teachers’ learning goals and to provide a framework for setting expectations around particular instructional strategies or content. Coaching modules are collections of assets that are topic-, subject-, or strategy specific. They also provide guidelines and suggestions about how to use assets with teachers to address specific professional development needs. These coaching suggestions are categorized by purpose such as: understanding national standards, designing and implementing effective pre-service or in-service professional development, deepening teacher content knowledge, understanding student thinking and how students learn, understanding specific strategies to improve classroom practice, and others.
PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection uses an embedded communication system that allows coaches and mentors to search, save, and suggest resources with personalized instructions to their teachers. After navigating PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection’s content, one facilitator commented: “It seems to me that the wealth of resources allows the coach to make ‘IEP-like’ suggestions (specific to the learner’s needs and interests). As I worked through one of the suggestions, I was amazed at how I could pick the ones that I felt would be beneficial.”
How would you describe AIT’s involvement in the development of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection?
AIT has been much more than a service provider for PBS TeacherLine. AIT’s experience, professionalism, dedication, and flexibility has made us think of them as partners much more than as service providers. AIT has been instrumental in the development of the “new” repurposed content for PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. Like true partners, AIT has been with us in the good and the challenging times. AIT understood that we, at PBS TeacherLine, were breaking ground with this project, that there were no road maps to follow. New formats to deliver content were constantly tested. The implications were obvious—we had to go back and rethink—and try again.
AIT’s main responsibilities were to identify and tag more than 3,000 assets from our existing courses and to repackage and develop over 200 coaching modules. As AIT was doing this work, we were developing a home-grown content management system to host all assets and coaching modules as well as designing and developing PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. AIT helped us all the way—providing input that resulted in a content management system suited to host, develop, and tag our resources. AIT developed a style guide manual with our own taxonomy which informed the design of a search engine allowing educators to find the content in PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. AIT has been extremely efficient. We believe this project has been managed very well. AIT provided excellent customer support and was flexible to adapt their work to our needs and all the uncertainties we faced.
PBS has been in the online learning business for a long time with TeacherLine. What do you see as the key advantages of online learning? And what do you see as some of the challenges?
Online learning presents a number of advantages for teaching professionals in a world that is rapidly changing and affords very little time to keep abreast of innovations. Online learning allows educators to attend a course anytime, from anywhere, 24/7. Learner participation tends to be more thoughtful. It allows them more time to craft thoughtful and meaningful posts. It compels them to improve written communication. Additionally, it fosters the development of learning communities where sharing knowledge and experience becomes as important as the course content itself, if not more so. The “instructor” is no longer the only source of “knowledge.” Help can come in a number of ways: from the course site, from other learners, and even instructors are more approachable as they tend to be “in the course” more often than the regular contact hours in a classroom. For some learners, it is less intimidating—they tend to be more participative in this kind of environment. Probably one of the most important advantages of online learning is that it allows professional development and growth for those who are geographically dispersed and have no easy access to professional development centers.
On the other hand, online learning is not for everyone. For some, the medium is too “cold” or “impersonal.” Others struggle with technology, and this becomes a hurdle in their learning process. Still others find it difficult to address confidential issues over the Internet, and definitely there are some who will be very vocal in a face-to-face situation but will tend to be quiet in the online environment.
How does PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection build on the advantages and also address the challenges?
Coaches/mentors and teachers using PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection will find that they can access the content and the tool anytime anywhere they have a computer and an Internet connection. PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection offers different virtual spaces in which coaches and mentors can communicate in private with their teachers about their professional growth, recommend resources, and provide suggestions—all this without having to spend hours searching and saving resources, and re-thinking the ways teachers can use these resources to achieve their professional development goals. Through the use of collaborative virtual spaces such as the discussion boards, coaches can form and sustain communities of practice that eventually evolve into professional learning communities. Resources can be saved, labeled, and rated. The rating system allows users to share why they liked a resource and how they expect to use it or have used it—thus expanding the knowledge of the community. This is PBS TeacherLine’s first attempt to incorporate Web 2.0 tools that facilitate collaboration and sharing among users. Unlike the typical online course, PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection supports blended or face-to-face professional development approaches.Some educators are familiar with learning online and have had some experience as online learners; others have not. How will PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection assist those who are new to online learning?
When subscribing to PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection, schools and districts are entitled to enroll their school-based or district-based professional developers in three online professional development sessions in PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. The purpose of the online professional development sessions is to provide the participants with a basic understanding of the elements of high-quality professional development and the needs of adult learners, a basic overview of the multiple roles they play in their school community, and how to form and sustain professional learning communities. In the study of these topics, the participants become familiar with functions and instructional resources of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection and plan how the service can be used to support their teachers and enhance their schools’ professional development programs.
We strongly recommend coaches and administrators use PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection to support the efforts of schools and districts that have coaching or mentoring models in place and in situations where educators feel reasonably comfortable with technology. For those educators who have never taken an online course, PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection provides them with the opportunity to get “a taste” of what learning online is all about. It exposes them to elements, tools, and resources of an online course and of online learning without the pressure of taking a course. Those educators new to online learning will find PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection “very clear and organized well,” as noted by one of our course facilitators.
What do you see as the future of online learning in general?
It is only going to get better. It is exciting to see where it is going now. Web 2.0 tools are allowing users to generate content and to share it with others. This content can be easily searched and saved. The social book-marking tools make it easy to find resources and allow the creation of new methods of cataloging and tagging resources. The coming generations of educators will not find the online medium cold or impersonal. In fact, it will be their way of communication and learning.
Where is PBS heading in professional development? What’s ahead?
PBS was founded on the notion of delivering education services using prevailing technology. At the time, that technology was television. In the digital age, the prevailing technology is online. So, a good bit of the future of professional development for PBS will rest with where the technology takes us as a nation. In the immediate future, PBS TeacherLine is charged with developing resources for teacher mentors and with developing tools to cultivate communities of practice. We will deliver on those needs before the current Ready To Teach grant expires in 2010.
Do you have any anecdotes or personal experiences shared by participants in your online learning opportunities that you find inspiring?
PBS TeacherLine recently introduced the PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection product to a number of facilitators who have had a history of working with the PBS TeacherLine online courses. This was an opportunity to orient those who already know PBS TeacherLine with our latest product. One of the facilitators remarked, “As I looked at PBS Teacherline Peer Connection, I immediately wanted to share it with a friend of mine that is a Literacy Coach. The power of this tool is that it does not portray the idea of ‘Instructor Led,’ but rather, collaboration of members within a group. These groups will be sharing ideas and resources, asking specific questions, and learning and growing together. The title, ‘(PBS TeacherLine) Peer Connection’ and the ‘Suggestions’ tab really makes it feel that all participants have knowledge and resources to bring to the table!” It’s always rewarding to know that PBS TeacherLine is providing remarkable resources which serve our nation’s educators and lead to improvements in both teaching and learning.
Read our informative Featured Article about PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection.