When I was teaching online, I really loved taking professional development classes. For me, the most fun part of taking the professional development classes was the interaction I had with other teachers. I love the community of learning that we developed when I met other teachers and when I interact with other teachers. We would exchange teaching ideas, and we would exchange great best practices in teaching which resulted in me being energized about teaching. I would learn from other teachers how they handle difficult students, what what programs they used to speed up grading, what writing props they used for creative writing, or how they kept their forum posts fresh and other teaching tricks. During my time teaching online, there were three kinds of professional development classes I came across, and they were self-paced classes, webinars, and instructor led online classes.
I like the online self-paced class and/or webinar because I was able to work at my own pace and that there were no deadlines. I could work as slow or as fast as I wanted to. There were no deadlines. You can finish the class in a few hours, few weeks, or even in a few months. There was nobody there to bother you with deadlines or reminders about late policy. For me, the self-paced class turned out to be easier and more convenient than the instructor led class.
I like the instructor led online classes because I love interacting in the forums with other instructors. I love to get fresh ideas about teaching and most of all I love to network with other teachers so in the future I could do projects with them or even get a job at their school. When you have a question, there is an instructor in the class to answer your questions.
So depending on your time and schedule, either a self-paced class or an instructor led online developer a personal development class are both good options for professional development. It depends on your preferences and what you like which class you want to take.
I took one hour webinar classes at Faculty Focus many years ago. I also took many instructor led classes at OLC, Online Learning Consortium. OLC offers teaching certificates such as the Online Teacher Certificate and I think they offer an Instructional Design Certificate as well. If you are more interested in online class quality, you can take classes at Quality Matters. I enjoyed taking the Applying the Quality Matters Rubric class which taught me how to properly evaluate a well-designed online class and taught me how to design a really good online class.
What are your favorite professional development classes? How does your school offer professional development classes?
No comments:
Post a Comment