Abstract
The study compared the effects of a professional development course delivered in an online and a face-to-face format. The effects examined included changes in teachers’ pedagogical beliefs, instructional practices, and understanding of teaching number-sense and related mathematical concepts. The study randomly assigned participants to either the online or the face-to-face format and employed the same instructors, reading materials, and instructional activities for both formats of the course. Both formats of the course were also delivered over the same eight-week period and required participants to invest approximately the same amount of time each week engaging in learning activities. Both formats of the course showed significant impacts on teachers’ mathematical understanding, pedagogical beliefs, and instructional practices. Consistent with prior research on online versus face-to-face instruction, the positive outcomes were comparable across both formats. Interestingly, teachers who participated in the online course reported that they were more willing to take courses in the future online than did teachers in the face-to-face condition. Further research is needed to determine whether this finding is limited to self-selectedteachers, the specifics of this course, or other factors that limit generalizability.
Highlights
Online professional development provides several advantages over face-to-face sessions
Teachers in remote areas or who work in small schools can gain access to professional development courses that would otherwise be expensive or impractical to deliver in a face-to-face environment
Threaded discussions available in online environments differ from face-to-face discussions in that they enable exchanges across time and space, provide a permanent record of interactions, and allow participants more time to reflect on a given topic before responding [9]
Summary
Online professional development provides several advantages over face-to-face sessions. The study presented here builds on past research that examines the effect that different design features of online professional development has on teachers’ knowledge, pedagogical beliefs, and instructional practices [1, 2]. These previous studies systematically varied the level of interactions that occurred within different versions of a professional development course. The background survey contained items that were used to form four scales These scales and their associated reliabilities included Prefer to Work on a Team (.78), Prefer to Learn on Own (.69), Proactive Regarding Own Professional Development (.56), and Access to and Use of Technology (.70). Each of these scales was standardized to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation equal to one
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