October 2003

E-Mentoring

EDC provides online support to new teachers in Milwaukee

This fall nearly 800 new teachers have entered classrooms in the Milwaukee Public Schools for the first time. According to recent statistics from the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, upwards of half of them will be gone by the fall of 2008. Like school leaders across the country, administrators in Milwaukee are working hard to slow down this revolving door in the profession and keep their best teaching talent in the classroom.

A new professional development initiative that provides online mentoring for teachers may help to slow these high teacher attrition rates. At any time of day, novice teachers in Milwaukee can go online to connect with experienced teachers in the district as well as others new to the profession.

“The program is a huge benefit for teachers,” says EDC’s Kirsten Peterson. “Typically, schools don’t have anything set up for new teachers. They’re often left to sink or swim on their own. With this program, new and experienced teachers participate together in a six-week online workshop facilitated by a veteran teacher in the district. The workshop allows new teachers to learn and contribute to a larger system, along with their more experienced peers.”

A team of educators in EDC’s Center for Online Professional Education (COPE), in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University, is working with teacher leaders in Milwaukee to incorporate the program, called EdTech Leaders Online (ETLO), into their existing professional development programs. Funded by the Joyce Foundation, the program offers 25 online workshops (see box at right) led by teachers who have themselves been trained by COPE staff in successful online facilitation and course design.

For a large, spread-out district like Milwaukee that has changing priorities and agendas, the ETLO program provides needed stability for staff, both novice and experienced. “One way to build continuity in a district is to have a solid ongoing professional development program that doesn’t change from year to year,” says Peterson. “Research shows that stability in professional development programs helps retain teachers. By training local teacher leaders to develop and facilitate their own online workshops, the project helps the district build in-house capacity and allows professional development to put down roots.”

A distinct benefit of the ETLO program is the flexibility it affords busy teachers. “The program provides access to professional development any time, any place,” says Peterson. “Teachers can take part in professional development during a prep period, during lunch, after school, anywhere in the school, and at home.” In a survey of teachers who took an online workshop, 92 percent cited ‘could work according to own schedule’ and ‘didn’t have to travel’ as advantages of the online workshop versus a face-to-face seminar.

Critics may point out the impersonal nature of an online mentoring program. However, Milwaukee’s ETLO program incorporates face-to-face meetings that infuse a sense of community among teachers. “The initial meeting is face-to-face, which helps teachers connect to one another, put faces with names, and jumpstart the feeling of community before they begin the online workshop,” says Jennifer Wilson, a teacher facilitator in Milwaukee. One of the first to go through a facilitator preparation course, Wilson helps promote conversations among teachers during the online workshops. Teachers appreciate the face-to-face meeting, which not only helps them feel a sense of connection with other workshop participants, but also prepares them to use the technology that drives the online interactions.

Promoting comfort with technology is a distinct benefit of the program for veteran teachers who are wary of computers. “The workshop helped me to overcome my lack of confidence in the use of computer technology. It has given me the tools to use this form of technology effectively and efficiently,” says a teacher.

New teachers in the program, who are already comfortable using computers, are learning how to use technology to enhance their students’ learning, rather than using technology for the sake of using it. “The new folks learn a great deal about curriculum development and classroom management from the veteran teachers—this is why it’s so wonderful to have both groups in the same course for several weeks,” says Peterson.

As an additional incentive to take the online workshops, teachers can earn graduate credit from a local university, which helps them meet district professional development requirements. Many who were drawn to the course for the credit are finding unexpected benefits from online professional development. As one teacher explains, “I signed up for the course to get the one graduate credit—if I learned something I could use then all the better. I’m happy to report that what I learned in the course and what I learned about my classmates’ views on making their teaching better has made taking this course extremely satisfying. There is, indeed, fresh thought being put into how to better educate children, how to make it more meaningful, and how to help teachers achieve higher levels of accomplishment.”

Although there is abundant anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of online professional development, little formal research has been completed. However, Peterson reports that NSF recently awarded EDC a grant to compare the impact of online professional development with face-to-face and hybrid approaches.

http://main.edc.org/newsroom/features/ETLO.asp

©2003 Education Development Center, Inc. All Rights Reserved.