Rethinking PD (Part 1)

This post is Part 1 in a 3 part series that will focus on building a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid of face to face PD and virtual PD. In Part 1, I will focus on what led to this hybrid PD model and what it looks like currently.

What Led To the Need for a Virtual PD Option
Through my work at Friday Institute, I’ve visited many districts (LEAs) and schools across NC. Much of the work that I do is providing face to face professional learning experiences for educators. Oftentimes this model includes approximately 3-4 visits to their district or school during a given school year – with each visit consisting of a full day of professional learning (6-7 hours). Sometimes this learning is facilitated PD, and sometimes it’s coaching or learning walks.

One of the districts I’ve served this school year is located in a remote part of Western NC. They are a 6 hour drive from where I live, which makes traveling for PD difficult, especially during the months when weather is not favorable. Because of their location, weather that might not seem treacherous in other parts of the state, can shut down their normal day to day operations causing them to miss multiple school days. Another factor with serving a district that has a very remote location is trying to plan the actual face to face PD days around both their calendar and the chance of adverse weather. Generally, we have to plan for PD at the beginning of the school year, a session in early fall, and then two more well into late winter or early spring. This causes a huge gap of time between PD sessions 2 and 3, often leading to a disconnect between myself (the facilitator) and the learners.

I share all of that, not to set up a situation that seems insurmountable (we’ve been doing this on our team for years), but to lead into why I felt a need to explore an alternative option for professional learning, especially in the interim between face to face PD sessions. I know that face to face can’t be matched in its ability to truly impact learners, build relationships, and offer hands on experiences. However, I am beginning to see that face to face PD is not largely scaleable and has limitations and constraints when things like adverse weather is involved. I also realize that many districts and schools we serve have a need to see me (the facilitator) and work with me more than 4 times during a school year. In order to promote sustainability, a hybrid PD model offers the opportunity to create learning experiences, meet with small groups and individuals to provide coaching, and a chance to continue to connect with learners.

What We Know All Good Professional Learning Experiences Should Have
There is a plethora of research on best practices and models for sustainable and impactful professional learning experiences (see works consulted at the end of this post). Whether we are creating face to face learning experiences or virtual ones, there are some common threads that must be present for learners to feel that the experience is both sustainable and impactful (also, please note this list is in no way exhaustive).

• Is Content Focused
  Professional learning must be content focused. It is very important to give learners not just what they need, but also what they want. Taking into account their passion to learn makes the learning experience much more meaningful and helps to ensure that they will take and use what they learn and explore during a session. Content focused PD experiences have specific learning goals and are grounded in things like solid instructional practice and seamlessly embedded technology use. These learning experiences must also be structured so that learners can see curriculum and pedagogical connections. It’s important for them to be able to visualize and then actualize how what they’re learning will effect student outcomes.
• Allows for Active Learning
  All professional learning experiences should give learners a chance to actively learn and use content. Educators need time to not only explore resources, information, tools, etc., but also the time to put these things into practice. Sometimes this is facilitator led activities and sometimes this is self-paced exploration, modeling learner agency, that results in some type of product that they can immediately use with students. By creating environments where learners are given the chance to actively engage, we are making it safe to take risks, fail forward, and test and iterate ideas.
• Models Good Instructional Practices
  In planning and facilitating professional learning experiences, we have to model solid pedagogical practice for learners. Modeling these practices allows the learner to see it in action, helping him/her visualize this for their own students. It is important to also include here embedded technology use, time for reflection, and opportunities for both giving and receiving feedback. As we create PD that models good instructional practice, it is also important to promote the idea of learner agency. Learners should have choice and be given opportunities to drive their own learning.
• Promotes Collaboration
  Professional learning experiences should have time built in where participants can learn from each other. This might be guided or scaffolded learning activities where learners use each other’s expertise and skills to solve problems or create new products or understandings, or it may be team challenges that they complete using each other for support. Regardless of how, learners need time to practice collaborating in a safe space.
• Builds in Time for Feedback and Reflection
  During any learning experience, learners must have time for both low stakes feedback and to reflect on not only what they’re learning, but how this learning makes them feel, what they will take from it, and how the learning could have been more effective. It is can also be helpful to institute a feedback loop to help teachers monitor implementation of the things they learned during PD.
• Is Sustainable
  Planning and preparing for sustainability can be hard but is so necessary for any kind of professional learning. When my phase of the work is done with a district or school, it’s important to leave them with momentum, capacity, and expertise to continue on. In order to create sustainability, PD must include coaching and expert support. These should be available throughout the learning process, as well as in the interim between sessions. It is also important to provide follow up to help learners implement what they’re learning. Follow up happens throughout the process, but there should be scaffolds in place for this to continue once the PD is over with.

What Does Virtual PD (A Hybrid Model) Look Like?
My goal is to create a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid model. Virtual PD would be used to supplement face to face PD experiences in the interim and would feel much like a face to face learning experience. Often we visit a district or school approximately four times a school year – a hybrid PD model (face to face + virtual PD experiences) offers the opportunity to continue learning and build on concepts already learned, create coaching experiences that are ongoing during the school year, and model instructional practice that affords learners agency.

Using a platform, such as Zoom, the facilitator can create virtual experiences that are much like face to face PD. With only one facilitator, each time slot (session) would offer one live virtual learning experience and a few self-paced, on your own learning experiences.

An important aspect of creating a sustainable virtual learning model is supporting learners during the actual event. There should be live, virtual support with the facilitator built into the day (between sessions, scheduled “office hours”, or even Q&A sessions). This support and scaffolding has to be advertised and communicated so that learners understand its role and how to access this support during learning. One drawback of a one facilitator model is that while live virtual experiences are happening, the facilitator will not be available to answer questions and offer support to those learners choosing to do self-paced activities. To counterbalance this, there should also be on the ground support in the school or district that is being served. This could be Instructional Technology facilitators, Media Coordinators, etc. – It’s important to recognize and utilize the capacity in the district or school. These people should be available during the event to assist learners with questions and technology issues that might arise. It is also helpful to offer a backchannel or way that learners can “ask” questions or make comments that can be seen synchronously and asynchronously by the facilitator and other learners.

When planning virtual PD, an important thing to consider is the overarching theme or learning goals for the day. Will the experience be a buffet of topics or will it focus on specific learning goals? Both options work in different ways.

How We Got Started
Before exploring the virtual PD option for this district, I had visited them for two face to face sessions – one in October 2017 and one in January 2018. Both sessions were very learner focused, hands-on, and offered much time for feedback and reflection. I also have each learner complete an evaluation at the end of each face to face PD session, giving me feedback and reflection on their experience as a learner. Digging into the evaluations from both the October and January face to face sessions gave me some grows to consider moving forward:

• • • There’s a huge perceived divide in technology confidence and ability from the learners themselves. Many of the learners feel that a small group (5-6) of their peers are very advanced and are bored during PD because I have to slow down for those that don’t catch on as quickly or need more help. The interesting thing about this is that those that are considered “more advanced” give very positive feedback regarding the PD experience and never complain that it moves too slow. Again, this points to perception and the need to help build technology confidence in those that are lacking this.
    • Some of the learners feel that the face to face sessions are too content heavy. They stress that only having an hour during an activity that includes pedagogical practice and embedded technology use, is not enough time to dive in and explore content. They enjoy the hands on applications of instructional practice and technology use, but some wish that learning could be less “theoretical”.
    • Some learners simply want tool instruction. They want the basics on all of the tools that I feature (in application). Unfortunately, while this may be a request, it is not in line with best practices in professional learning and would do little to benefit instructional practice. Since this need seems to recur in the evaluations, the district leadership team and I discussed that this is a perfect use of their capacity – using their tech staff and media coordinator to do some of the “basics” training when it is needed or desired. We are still working to find the best way to accomplish this.
    • Some comments on prior evaluations mentioned the need to be able to work at their own pace and have more choice in their learning. This call for more learner agency helped to drive some of the decisions in what to offer during the virtual learning event.

After I reflected on the evaluations from the two prior sessions, I considered how to know when my learners would be ready for this type of experience. Due to our time constraints in both planning and implementing the actual virtual learning day, I was not able to construct a formal readiness quotient, but I have started to think about what this would look like. This is an important question to consider before thinking about creating a hybrid PD model (which I will address further in Part 2 and 3).

There is much planning that must happen prior to a virtual learning experience. I met with the district team multiple times to explain the idea, go over the data that led to this decision, and to get their input on content, their capacity to offer support, and the availability of technology for the event. We also had a test run one week before where we tested the technology and platform from various places in the district to make sure that everything would run seamlessly. 

In Part 2 of this series, I will outline the actual event and talk more about the planning and scheduling choices made to accommodate learning.

Works Consulted:

5 Strategies For Better Teacher Professional Development. (2014). TeachThought. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/5-strategies-better-teacher-professional-development/

5 Ways to Transform PD with Best Practices for Learning. (2018). Activelylearn.com. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.activelylearn.com/post/transform-pd-best-practices

Effective Teacher Professional Development. (2018). Learning Policy Institute. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professional-development-report