Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Specific questions addressing the use of PBL showed a moderate gain in using
PBL in the classroom. When asked on the post-survey if participants would continue
using PBL in their classrooms, responses were mixed. This result perhaps shows the
challenges of having large, sustained impact on teacher practice with PD workshop
interventions.
Long-Term Impact
Many reviews of teacher PD have bemoaned the lack of long-term impact studies
(Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007; Schlager et al., 2009; Wayne et al., 2008), be they
months or even years later. These are expensive to conduct and, as such, data are
scarce.
However, as the IA is a Web-based environment, Web-usage data can be auto-
matically collected during participants' online activities [called
webmetrics
(Khoo
et al., 2008)]. Table 15.9 shows a summary of usage activities to date and provides
a hint of the impact of workshop activities on participants' long-term behavior. The
results suggest that all participants used the IA and created several projects with
many online resources. The high number of visits suggests that students accessed
these projects, some many times. Note, also, the high standard deviations. These
suggest that usage varied widely among participants.
Finally the last column shows the percent of participants still using the IA during
the most recent school year, ranging from 10 to 35%. Again, since PD studies sel-
dom report long-term impact data (Wayne et al., 2008), it is hard to know how these
compare.
Conclusion
The impetus for this ongoing 8-year-long research project was to enable grade
school and secondary education school teachers to have better access to the vast
array of free online educational resources available to them. As technology has
evolved, so has the focus of our work. At the beginning of the project our main
concern was getting teachers to use online resources and we were not as concerned
with the method by which they taught with them, nor were we as concerned with
the long-term impacts of our workshop model.
The long-term nature of this project has showed us the difficulty of the task we
have sought to undertake. Coupling basic technology skills training with design and
pedagogical skills building increases the difficulty of the task but the integration of
the three skill areas helps teachers to see the whole picture and thus are more likely
to effectively integrate online resources into their classrooms.
The long-term nature of the project has also showed us that while we have tried
to focus in on specific target audiences community (for example, teachers teaching
grades 3-9 with a focus on math and science), as we have believed that this would
