Faculty Professional Learning: An Examination of Online Development and Assessment Environments - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 83

curricular & co-curricular; step 3: instruc-
tion; step 4: student performance; step 5:
assessment. Third, evaluate and summa-
rize which CPI steps have been taken in the
selected program improvement.

program evaluation course. Problems encountered
during the mentioned course created an additional
burden for mentors running the course: pedagogic
concepts used for designing lessons, activities and
tests, participants' understandings coming from
scientific areas; and a number of discrete internal
technology infrastructures (e.g., connection with
the server, software support, and so on) (Alegre
& Villar, 2006).

• Activity 5. Model of reflection . Specific

tasks: first, select the improvement plan
of History Teaching (see reference in the
Resource Directory of the above course).
Second, rearrange the improvements table
reclassifying it according to the concepts
of the model of reflection by McAlpine et
al. (1999, p. 106): goals, knowledge, ac-
tion, monitoring and decision making, and
gallery of tolerance.

FACULTY'S eLeCTRONIC
PORTFOLIO

Web-Supported Assessment
Strategies • Strategy. Improvement plans . Specific

tasks: first, select an improvement program
(see references in the Resource Directory
of the above course). Second, suggest a
strategy that can (a) specify whether the ac-
tion improves organizational management,
personnel, or out of the center responsibil-
ity; (b) sort the field of action for improve-
ment as teaching, research or management;
(c) suggest an action for each improvement
item in the organization of the selected for-
mative program; (d) refer the name of the
office or staff to be responsible for actions;
(e) write a monitoring indicator for each
action (specify or document results that
serve to check the status of development of
the action), and (f) weigh the importance
of actions setting a timetable for imple-
mentation of each improvement action.

We structured online FPL programs around five
milestone tasks which were related to fundamental
program factors: (a) curriculum design (e.g., pre-
sentation of accurate, current and research-based
substantial content); (b) model of learning and of
supporting learning (e.g., dialogue among course
participants about the content meaning and activi-
ties); (c) participant inquiry and assessment (e.g.,
the ability of participants to ask questions and
share responses in a chat environment that can be
personalized to support responsiveness and trust,
and the development of assignments that can apply
to the improvement of classroom teaching); (d)
operating system platforms (e.g., the facility of
the computer-based learning environment not to
detract from faculty members' learning), and (e)
evaluation (e.g., changes in participants' beliefs
concerning course effectiveness).
In describing online FPL, other scholars have
also substantiated analogous factors (King, 2002;
Owston et al., 2008). However, current evaluation
of FPL models pays relatively little attention to
the assumptions about the situated experience of
faculty learning. Nevertheless, it seems that an
analogous limitation reinforces the discourse of
professional development of teachers: 'Evalua-
tive research often compares methods of delivery

It is clear that the realization of scholarly online
FPL results from diverse practices, and field-spe-
cific activities. We have mapped a FPL formative
program evaluation course based on 1654 realized
activities by participants (e.g., professional reflec-
tions, development and implementation strategies
to meet established goals, and so on). Also, faculty
and agency staff answered 120 objective test ques-
tions for the overall twelve-lesson FPL formative