South East Cornerstone Public School Division (SECPSD) has had an online learning program since the school division formed in 2006 from the amalgamation of several smaller school divisions, during province-wide restructuring. During this past school year (2011 – 2012) we offered 26 online courses, taught by 15 different teachers. All but one of these teachers also taught in face-to-face (F2F), traditional classrooms. We have no separate course development project; teachers design and develop their own online courses. We are beginning a transition to a full virtual school, where a student could obtain all necessary high school credits online. The majority of these courses will be taught by teachers who will teach 100% online, with no F2F students.
Our online teachers are brought together two or three times a year for professional development specifically relating to online teaching. During the early years of our online program, our PD sessions would focus most heavily on the technical tools required to deliver instruction, with some time devoted to pedagogy and instructional design. Technology pieces including creating online courses in Blackboard, our learning management system; Adobe Connect, a web-based virtual conferencing tool that is used for synchronous audio-visual communications as well as for recording instruction for asynchronous delivery; SMARTBoards, which integrate well with Adobe Connect; and numerous Web 2.0 tools that can provide rich online experiences, such as Google docs, Voicethread, Prezi, and online simulations. Now seven years into our online program, we have a mix of online teaching experience in our online teaching group, from novices with no online teaching experience to those with six years and multiple courses of experience. Professional development sessions now include days just for the novices, which focuses more heavily but not exclusively on technology training, and PD days when we meet as a larger group where we now focus more on instructional design and pedagogical issues.
One of our PD goals is to assist our online teachers in realizing the challenges of online learning from a student point of view. It is often easy to blame student characteristics when a student does poorly or loses interest in an online class – the student is not an independent learner, has poor time management skills, and lacks motivation. However, online learning is becoming increasingly necessary as a means to provide full programing options to our students, particularly those in our rural schools where subject specialists in math and science cannot always be found and options for elective courses are minimal. Our online teachers must understand that our online programming must support the needs of all students taking our online courses, and not just the “ideal” online student. While all of our online teachers have excellent teaching skills in a F2F classroom, we understand that it can sometimes be difficult for these teachers, who have never taken an online class themselves, to relate fully to what challenges exist for their online students. During our PD sessions we work to discover the attributes of both course design and instructional practices that promote success for our online students, recognizing that there are differences between F2F and online instruction. Being an excellent teacher in a traditional classroom does not guarantee success in an online environment; we believe that self-reflection both online and in traditional classroom settings is a necessary practice.