ED013-06
Teacher Professional Development to Support Transition to Online
Tuesday, 8 December 2020: 20:53
Virtual
Jessica L Swann, Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration; ETX Center, Tempe, AZ, United States, Sina Kirk, Center for Education Through Exploration, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, AZ, United States, Chris Mead, Arizona State University, Center for Education Through Exploration, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, AZ, United States and Ariel D Anbar, Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Molecular Sciences, Tempe, AZ, United States
Abstract:
Among its many serious consequences, the covid-19 pandemic significantly disrupted in-person education in Spring 2020 and will continue to do so into Fall 2020 at least. Online learning is a possible alternative, but significant training is required before most educators can be effective. The NASA-funded Infiniscope project hosts a range of digital STEM learning experiences on the Infiniscope.org portal. The project has also built a digital teaching network and came into this emergency transition to online learning with considerable experience delivering online educator professional development (PD). In this presentation, we will describe the types of online PD we have offered to date and discuss new opportunities that could be explored in response to a growing need to teach, and to deliver active learning, online.
The Infiniscope project hosts PD webinars that enable educators to immediately use new materials and strategies. Since the pandemic, we have expanded our webinar content to include software and pedagogical techniques that are of elevated importance with the transition to more online learning. This has included an introduction to "screencasting" and a survey of non-Infiniscope resources that are of interest to our community. We also hosted two multi-day workshops, one focused on using and creating browser-based virtual field trips (VFT) and another around universal design for learning (UDL) in remote and online learning environments, a set of techniques with benefits to both online and in-person learning.
As we continue to develop and build our program of PD webinars, we will continue to address the immediate needs of educators. Such topics include how to use Infiniscope digital learning experiences or those from other NASA partners and beyond. However, we will also look for ways that we can help educators find new ways to provide active learning experiences, particularly in remote and online settings. This is exemplified by our recent VFT training and our work with small groups of educators to train them in advanced digital lesson authoring.
