My Study: In what ways can administrators best support educators in their development of online courses? What impediments or challenges do educators face in the development of online courses?
Context: Due to the prevailing budgetary challenges facing many school districts, district leaders are looking for creative ways for their teachers to advance professionally. One way is for teachers to take online classes. Online training allows the district to save in travel expenses and in hiring substitute teachers. Furthermore, online training is available 24/7. This offers teachers the flexibility of accessing the training anytime and anywhere.
Because the region center addresses the needs of our local districts, leadership is requesting our educators to develop the training they do in an online format.
Target Population: Region center educational specialists, full and part time staff
Sample Selection: Approximately 65-100 educators with diverse backgrounds and grade levels
Sample Size Rationale: The sample is made up of all of the educators on staff, full and part time. This group of educators is responsible for developing and delivering all of training to our participating districts. At this time, leadership is not considering hiring consultants to develop the training.
How I Will Conduct My Research: A committee and technology staff will work closely to design a questionnaire or survey that will help extract challenges, impediments, as well as ideas the educators have regarding the development of online training. Once the online questionnaire is designed, the technology staff will email it to all of the educators. For additional feedback, a focus group made up of educators and administrators will meet to share ideas on how to develop the online trainings. The data from the questionnaire, including the feedback from the focus group, will be aggregated by the technology staff and distributed to the administrators and educators. For additional information, the technology staff will interview those educators that are interested in further sharing their ideas.
I believe this to be a useful project to undertake but have some questions regarding the exact nature of the study itself as I am not certain what exactly you are hoping to learn with the survey. In utilizing this survey tool, what types of questions will you be asking of the teachers surveyed? Are you wanting to gauge their overall receptiveness to taking online classes? Are you looking for information about what types of offerings they would like to see made available? Are you trying to discern what teachers would be willing to aid in the development and delivery of these classes?
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