Proposal

Dear John Riever, Director of Instruction in Technology and Math,

Approximately 5 years ago, I became a facilitator in School district #23’s professional development initiative called Pearson’s Breakthrough Math which is a model of Lesson Study.  ‘Lesson Study’, a professional development method, consists of a systematic and iterative cycle of collaborative experimentation by a group of teachers consisting of design, implementation and analysis of a lesson (Shimizu, 2007). Through group study and collaboration, teachers acquire a deeper understanding of teaching and learning through exposure to various perspectives, experiences and meanings and the collaborative negotiation of their meaning (Von Glasersfeld, 1989).  

By extending this initiative to an online platform, we can create a course and community that would allow teachers from across the district and province to form lesson study groups in their subject and grade area.  Research has shown that e-learning increases flexibility of time and space learning and group collaborative tools increase learner motivation, participation, performance, and exposer to alternative views than individual learning (Zang & Nunamaker, 2003).  With this in mind, I am pleased to present a proposal for implementing a Lesson Study Moodle Course for school district #23.  The goal of this solution is to enhance and address some of the key issues in professional development and resource creation and management through the utilization of an LMS platform.  Using the Bates and Poole’s SECTIONS model, I have outlined the specific solutions that a LMS can offer to the key issues in Lesson Study:  

STUDENTS

• Colleagues as well as their resources become more easily accessible to peers enabling student-centered group learning
• Increases the exposure of lesson study to potential participants
• Learners gain new perspectives from peers, district and province wide, about teaching and related technology resources such as smartboards 

EASE OF USE 

• Consistent, easy to understand, and intuitive lesson study framework across study groups and activities
• Instant updates and tracking of lesson study progress and resources
• Searchable, organized, revisable, and ratable resource repository for lessons and studies enabling avoidance of ‘islands’ of information and duplication

COST

• Although building on an existing initiative, district budgets mandate that overall costs of set-up and maintenance of the course be minimal and facilitated by volunteers
• Reduces costs associated with time and space for face to face meetings

TEACHING AND LEARNING

• Provides a variety of instructional tools including static and interactive options
• Supports multimedia for presentation of video recorded lessons

INTERACTIONS

• Asynchronous and synchronous collaborative tools provide instant editing and feedback between facilitators and peers
• Allows learners to rate and comment on peer’s work

ORGANIZATIONAL

• Provides a secure and reliable system of communication, group study and resources

NOVELTY

• Provides an innovative and boundless platform for Lesson Study and resource sharing and management

SPEED

• Allows quick and reliable course dissemination, development and updating in order to be current and responsive to learners needs

Based on my experiences with Moodle, WebCT, LMS selection rubrics and EduTools, I believe an LMS would need to have the following key features to satisfy the course requirements and goals:

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING COMMUNITY TOOLS

• Self-paced learning tools including static course pages, multimedia files, and links
• Scheduled learning tools including assignments, polling questions, quizzes, and surveys
• Group Learning tools including web conferencing, wiki, workshop, forum, RSS feed and email notification, whiteboard, chat, blog, messaging, glossary, etc.  

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

• Calendar tool enables student controlled postings to calendar
• RSS tool enables feeds for notification of any changes to course or resources
• Help feature provides information for any tool in context and offers online tutorials and community support 

STUDENT INVOLVEMENT TOOLS

• Group work tool is student controlled enabling self-selection and creation of group learning tools

COURSE DELIVERY TOOLS

• Online marking tools enable students and instructors to rate and comment on peers work within group learning tools like forum, workshop and glossary
• Course management tool allows instructor to restrict access based on group membership 
• Student tracking tool enables the instructor to monitor a student’s participation and give encouragement if necessary

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

• LMS provides default course templates and editing options enabling easy course shell development
• Overall format and tools are consistent and user-intuitive for instructor and students

ADMINISTRATION TOOLS

• Authentication tools supports security through passwords which controls access to course content and tools based on roles and group membership
• Registration tool allows self-registration to course or group

After reviewing 15 different open source and commercial learning management systems in Edutools, it became clear that many of the systems support the same tools and features.  However, Moodle was the preferred choice for the following reasons:

• The Moodle system has proven that it can support an extensive online Moodle support community, one that is similar to the Lesson Study course and community that I am proposing.   This online community assists other Moodle users, works with developers to construct and test new features, and enables individuals to create and share plug-ins.
• Within the creation of a Moodle course in ETEC 510, I have implemented and tested various Moodle tools including forum, wiki, gradebook, blog, chat, workshop, glossary, and quiz.
• Moodle is an open source system that is free.
• Courses can be altered by the instructor during their progression, enabling adaptive responses to learners needs.

Hardware, software and resources needed to bring Moodle online include:

• A miniumum of 160 MB of disk space to run Moodle and more space to store resource materials
• A minimum of 1GB of installed memory (RAM) which would allow for approximately 50 concurrent users 
• An Apache HTTP Server that supports PHP (version v4.3.0 or later)
• A MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle database  
• Cost of providing the server and hosting the site
• Setup will require creating an automatic backup procedure, security, extending Moodle with plug-ins, assigning roles and fielding technical problems
• Course development and management will rely upon volunteers

Hopefully this proposal has answered all of the pertinent questions pertaining to bringing Lesson Study within Moodle online, and we can begin working together towards creating a professional development platform that will enhance and extend the SD23’s Lesson Study initiative.

References:

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology.   In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (Pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

EduTools. (2011). Product comparison. Retrieved June 10, 2011 from http://www.edutools.info/compare.jsp?pj=4&i=554,592,616

Moodle. (2011). Managing a Moodle site. Retrieved June 10, 2011 from http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Managing_a_Moodle_site

Shimizu, Y. (2007) Lesson study: What, why, and how? In H. Bass, Z. Usiskin, & G. Burill (Eds.), Studying classroom teaching as a medium for professional development: Proceedings of a US-Japan Workshop (pp. 53-57). Atlanta, GA: National Academices Press. 

Von Glasersfeld, E. (1989) Cognition, construction of knowledge, and teaching.  Synthese, 80, 121-140.

Zhang, D., & Nunamaker, J. F. (2003). Powering e-learning in the new millennium: an overview of e-learning and enabling technology. Information Systems Frontiers, 5(2), 207–218.