Teachers today have increasing access to professional learning communities (PLCs) through a rapidly expanding menu of online professional development offerings. While a valued opportunity for growth, online PLCs can limit opportunities for co-teaching, pedagogical practice, and experiential learning. This paper examines a teacher professional development program implemented in 2022, where 14 middle school teachers joined either an online or an in-person version of a summer practicum in which PLCs were fostered. In both versions of the PD, teachers worked in small teams of co-teachers to learn and practice teaching middle school students about Artificial Intelligence (AI), a topic in which teachers were non-experts. Findings from qualitative analysis of teacher interviews suggest affordances and barriers to teacher learning online as compared to in-person PLCs. The paper offers recommendations for online PLC structure and co-teaching to enhance teacher learning.
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Online vs in-person professional learning communities: A qualitative comparison of teacher learning experiences
Teachers today have increasing access to professional learning communities (PLCs) through a rapidly expanding menu of online professional development offerings. While a valued opportunity for growth, online PLCs can limit opportunities for co-teaching, pedagogical practice, and experiential learning. This paper examines a teacher professional development program implemented in 2022, where 14 middle school teachers joined either an online or an in-person version of a summer practicum in which PLCs were fostered. In both versions of the PD, teachers worked in small teams of co-teachers to learn and practice teaching middle school students about Artificial Intelligence (AI), a topic in which teachers were non-experts. Findings from qualitative analysis of teacher interviews suggest affordances and barriers to teacher learning online as compared to in-person PLCs. The paper offers recommendations for online PLC structure and co-teaching to enhance teacher learning.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2048746
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10493292
- Publisher / Repository:
- International Society of the Learning Sciences.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning - CSCL 2023
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract This paper provides an experience report on a co‐design approach with teachers to co‐create learning analytics‐based technology to support problem‐based learning in middle school science classrooms. We have mapped out a workflow for such applications and developed design narratives to investigate the implementation, modifications and temporal roles of the participants in the design process. Our results provide precedent knowledge on co‐designing with experienced and novice teachers and co‐constructing actionable insight that can help teachers engage more effectively with their students' learning and problem‐solving processes during classroom PBL implementations.
Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic
Success of educational technology depends in large part on the technology's alignment with teachers' goals for their students, teaching strategies and classroom context.
Teacher and researcher co‐design of educational technology and supporting curricula has proven to be an effective way for integrating teacher insight and supporting their implementation needs.
Co‐designing learning analytics and support technologies with teachers is difficult due to differences in design and development goals, workplace norms, and AI‐literacy and learning analytics background of teachers.
What this paper adds
We provide a co‐design workflow for middle school teachers that centres on co‐designing and developing actionable insights to support problem‐based learning (PBL) by systematic development of responsive teaching practices using AI‐generated learning analytics.
We adapt established human‐computer interaction (HCI) methods to tackle the complex task of classroom PBL implementation, working with experienced and novice teachers to create a learning analytics dashboard for a PBL curriculum.
We demonstrate researcher and teacher roles and needs in ensuring co‐design collaboration and the co‐construction of actionable insight to support middle school PBL.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Learning analytics researchers will be able to use the workflow as a tool to support their PBL co‐design processes.
Learning analytics researchers will be able to apply adapted HCI methods for effective co‐design processes.
Co‐design teams will be able to pre‐emptively prepare for the difficulties and needs of teachers when integrating middle school teacher feedback during the co‐design process in support of PBL technologies.
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