Promoting Collaborative Learning in Online Teacher Education

Online learning continues to grow as a learning option for millions of students in US colleges and universities. Collaboration plays an important role in student learning. This chapter presents information on how collaborative learning was designed and implemented in a comprehensive online course in reading for pre-service and in-service educators in grades P-12. The author presents details on course design issues, instructional practices, benefits, and challenges associated with collaborative learning in this online course, and implications for further development and evaluation of collaborative learning in teacher preparation programs. The author also provides recommendations for promoting collaboration in online teacher education courses.

Perceptions of Preparation of Online Alternative Licensure Teacher Candidates

This chapter seeks to investigate the perceived sense of preparation for the classroom that leads to teacher effectiveness. The focus of this chapter is an exploration of the increasing role of alternative licensure and distance education in the preparation of teachers and results of a recent study concerning perceptions of a sense of preparedness espoused by alternative licensure teacher candidates after their online program completion.

The Journey from Dissenter to Advocate

This chapter details the experiences of a university professor whose perspectives shifted from one of initial dissent to eventual advocacy for online learning as a delivery mode for her reading/literacy courses. Spanning eight years, her distance education teaching practices were shaped by her personal ventures as an online student, the outcomes gained by enhancing the social presence of her online courses, collaboration with colleagues, and systematic examination of her online teaching practice relative to its rigor, quality, and effectiveness within a teacher preparation program. Insights gained while teaching online conclude with recommendations for faculty members, institutions, systems, and organizations with vested interest in the future of teacher education.

Windows into Teaching and Learning

Windows into Teaching and Learning (WiTL), a project conceived and actualized by authors situated in a large urban university in the southeastern region of the United States, captures the nuisance of online learning as a method for transforming school-based clinical experiences in teacher preparation programs. This chapter introduces and describes the theoretical context in which the project was developed in hopes to convey the potential for uncomplicated and intuitive innovations in teacher education to recalibrate current practices to the demands of the 21st Century classroom. An overview of the challenges facing colleges of education in providing meaningful and relevant clinical experiences to pre-service teachers enrolled in online distance education courses is discussed and serves as the impetus of WiTL. In the chapter, the authors explain the methods and technology used by the researchers to demonstrate the project’s practical duplicability in almost any course with clinical requirements. Furthermore, the authors provide a glimpse into the potential impact of WiTL as a means of facilitating meaningful field experiences in distance education and traditional coursework, as well as corollary benefits realized for student participants and mentor teachers.

Teacher Education with simSchool

This chapter introduces an innovative online learning platform for the preparation of teachers through simulations, which addresses some of the systemic challenges of teacher education in the US. The chapter contrasts traditional course-based online learning experiences with a simulation approach to four areas of teacher preparation: conceptions of teaching & learning, the organization of knowledge, assessment practices and results, and the engagement of communities of practice. The chapter outlines a rationale for the new approach based in self-direction and personal validation in a complex but repeatable practice environment, supported by emergent interdisciplinary knowledge concerning the unique affordances of digital media assessment and social media. The online simulation simSchool is used as an example model that embodies the new paradigm.

Preparing Pre-Service Secondary English Language Arts Teachers to Support Literacy Learning with Interactive Online Technologies

In this chapter, the authors present the framework and methods they employ to integrate online learning opportunities into an English teacher education program at a large, public university in the southeastern United States. The authors focus on their efforts to extend pre-service secondary English language arts teachers’ understandings of what constitutes literacy and what counts as text in the secondary English language arts classroom in a blended technology- and media literacy-focused methods course, a required component of a three-semester English Education Master’s degree program. Specifically, the authors document the ways they nudge pre-service teachers to consider the kinds of literacy events they might design and the types of literacy practices they might promote to support literacy learning with interactive online technologies and popular media in English language arts classrooms.

(Re)Assessing Student Thinking in Online Threaded Discussions

A teacher educator examines the level of critical thinking of her preservice teachers participating in an urban education course through online discussions. The objective was to see if online discussions, which were the heart of the learning process, could be an effective strategy to promote critical thinking skills. Using the revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) as a guide, participants’ posts and responses were assessed to determine the quality of thinking that occurred in the online discussion forum. Results show that utilizing online discussion forums can be an effective pedagogy for classes where complex, often controversial issues such as social justice, equity, and white privilege are discussed.

Differentiating Instruction for Adult Learners in an Online Environment

Teacher education courses offered online are becoming increasingly common. Unfortunately, few instructors of online teacher education courses have specific preparation for teaching adult learners or in teaching online courses, resulting in faltering attempts to transfer traditional methodology such as lectures to online platforms. This chapter considers the background of distance education and examines relevant literature on adult learners. Differentiated instruction is proffered as a means of meeting the needs of adult learners in online teacher education courses. Specific examples of differentiating content, process, and product are suggested.

Puttering, Tinkering, Building, and Making

Instructional simulation games are models of the real world that allow students to interact with events and objects that are normally inaccessible within a classroom setting. Yet, simply using an instructional simulation ignores powerful learning opportunities. Papert advocates going beyond simply using models. He promotes a fundamental change in how children learn through his theory of constructionism. Instead of constructivism with a “v,” Papert advocates a theory of learning called constructionism with an “n.” Constructionism aligns with constructivist theory with learners actively constructing knowledge from their experiences. But constructionism adds that new ideas are more likely to emerge when learners are actively engaged in designing or building an artifact or physical model that can be reflected upon and shared with others. Papert’s theoretical approach to learning is relevant to teacher education and should be applied to instruction via interactive, multimedia, and computer-aided simulations.

Improving Student Learning in a Fully Online Teacher Leadership Program

This chapter describes how faculty in a fully online Master’s program in teacher leadership are using a design-based approach, grounded in theory and informed by data, to iteratively improve core courses and student learning from them. Specifically, the authors revised their courses to meet Quality Matters (QM) standards for online course design, and then made incremental and ongoing revisions focused on course implementation and based on student responses to the Community of Inquiry (CoI) survey. The first part of the chapter describes the online program in which course improvements are taking place, and the QM and CoI theoretical frameworks. In the main body of the chapter, specific course revisions are discussed and initial findings reported which show significant improvements in student outcomes as a result of these revisions. This section also describes the design-based approach the authors adopted and provides recommendations for others who might want to similarly improve individual courses or program offerings as a whole. The chapter closes with a brief discussion of directions for future research and conclusions, which highlight what the authors believe are the most important aspects of this work.