eMSS {Electronic Mentoring for Student Success}
The eMSS program, for beginning math and science teachers, was developed based on both research and practitioner literature on professional development, online learning, and mentoring. Inquiries are conversation guides designed to help beginning teachers—with the help of mentors—to deepen their teaching practice and boost their effectiveness with students. The Inquiries, which form the core of the eMSS program, are online conversations based on classroom practices. Each Inquiry is flexible and adaptable for a beginning teacher’s own special teaching situation. A group of beginning teachers and mentors, guided by a facilitator, work together on an Inquiry over a period of eight weeks. There are three sessions of Inquiries offered during the year: fall, winter, and spring. Each session offers a choice of topics so beginning teachers can select an area relevant to their teaching. Inquiries follow a Plan, Prepare, and Reflect cycle. This cycle allows beginning teachers to dig deep into a topic in a manner that can be applied to other aspects of their teaching and transferable to other teaching situations.
Alyson Mike, Associate Project Director, John Moir, Writer, Kevin Drinkard, Math Specialist, Karl Forest, Site Support Specialist, Donna Markey, Participant Coordinator, Walt Woolbaugh and Jenny Combs, Facilitator Coordinator, Courtney Hoffman, Project Manager
Inquiries are a structured and facilitated “conversation guide” designed to help beginning teachers—with the help of mentors—to deepen their teaching practice and impact effectiveness with students. The Inquiries, which form the core of the eMSS program, are online conversations based on classroom practices. Each Inquiry is flexible and adaptable for a beginning teachers 's own special teaching context. A group of beginning teachers and mentors, guided by a facilitator, work together on an Inquiry over a period of eight weeks. There are three sessions of Inquiries offered during the year: fall, winter, and spring. Each session offers a choice of topics so beginning teachers can select an area relevant to their teaching. Inquiries follow a Plan, Prepare, and Reflect cycle. This cycle allows beginning teachers to dig deep into a topic in a manner that can be applied to other aspects of their teaching. The Inquiries incorporate all of McAleer’s (2008) experiential recommendations for a mentoring program.
The Inquiries that are offered in the 2008-2009 year are: Classroom Procedure, Using Manipulatives, Using Technology in Math and Science. Using Data in the Science Classroom, Looking at Student Understanding, Lesson Design, Multiple Representations, Effective Labs, Diversity, and Enhancing Instruction through Analysis of Student Work.
It is also important to attend to the research in the area of online instructional design. Zheng, L. & Smaldino, S. (2003) have identified in the research literature, five elements of instructional design that should be a part of all online professional development. They include:
Learner considerations: The unique needs of each participant including attitude or interests, prior skills, knowledge, experience as well as learning styles and interaction
Content organization: Consideration of the content and sequence of information as well as identifying goals and objectives
Instructional strategies: Selection of instructional strategies that enable all learners to participate in active learning
Learning Environment: Examination of the technology used and how the tools, resources, and pedagogical features are integrated to advance comprehension
Evaluation: Assessment of the course from the perspective of amount learned, integration of new skills into practice, and student satisfaction with the experience
Incorporating these elements in an online professional development program leads toward a more effective course. The Inquiries use these instructional design elements to provide high quality, effective online professional development to early career teachers.
The course is offered as part of the eMSS – Electronic Mentoring for Student Success program. It is part of the professional development options available to beginning math and science teachers. The course used many of the Sakai tools in the learning process.
As the eMSS program is a mentoring program the course is designed formatted with research based best practices in professional development. Professional development that focuses on how students learn, pedagogical and disciplinary content knowledge, and instructional practice can lead to improved student achievement (American Educational Research Association, 2005; Borasi and Fonzi, 2002; Desimone, L., Porter, A., Garet, M., Yoon, K., and Birman, B., 2002; Kennedy, 1998; Borko, 2004). Kedzior and Fifield (2004) draw these same conclusions from their synthesis of the literature and add that teachers begin to actively engage their students in developing ideas once they have a deeper understanding of the content. Borko (2004) makes the argument that when teachers have a powerful understanding of the content, consisting of subject-matter knowledge for teaching, understanding of student thinking, and instructional practices, it enables them to foster students’ conceptual understandings. Inquiries create a structured format for the beginning teachers to implement content rich best practices in their classrooms.
The discussions take place in the Discussion and Private Messages using JForum. Each part of the discussion – Plan, Prepare, and Reflect – are staged released every 2 weeks to allow participants to focus on each part of the inquiry at a pace that meets the needs of beginning teachers’ busy schedules. The discussions are the focus of the inquiry as the community engages in discussions of practice. The instructional sequence is built in the Melete tool. This allows parsing the Inquiry into the respective parts. Additionally, it allows the program staff to include graphics and mathematical representations within the interface to enhance the learning experience. The tool is renamed “Inquiry Directions”.
Through eMSS, new and veteran teachers collaborate in an interactive and facilitated professional community of practice to exchange information, ideas, and experiences in order to advance high-quality science and math instruction for all students. As the program is designed to be “uncourse –like” – several of the tools are renamed to better reflect the mentoring aspect of the program.
The Assignments Tool is renamed – Self-Assessment. Each participant must complete the Self-Assessment at the end of the inquiry as a means of assessing his or her professional practice and goals established at the onset of the Inquiry. In addition, participants are asked to identify successes and challenges. Finally, the participants engage in forward thinking or next steps in their teaching practice based on the outcomes of the Inquiry.
The Gradebook tool is also renamed – My Progress. Facilitators use a simple 1-point scoring system for each of the parts of the Inquiry. My Progress is an indicator of professional learning rather than a traditional grading mechanism.
The Resources tool is also an integral part of the Inquiries. Each Inquiry has examples, templates, and additional supplementary materials that may be used. The resources include websites that have been vetted by the eMSS project staff.
The eMSS Inquiries are designed specifically for collaboration within the community of practice. Initially these self-selected groups begin with introductions and exchanging personal information, but then the focus moves toward deepening the learning and understanding of participants. Highly skilled facilitators extract information, ask probing questions, summarize strategies and techniques offered, and keep the discussions moving forward.
Beginning teachers get feedback and suggestions from a community of mentors and other beginning teachers on each part of the learning process. Beginning teachers are provided input and then implement in their own classroom. Embedded in this cycle of learning is an opportunity to Prepare. This part of the Inquiry allows beginning teachers to learn from the community about pedagogical skills, resources, and logistics for implementation of the Plan.
Reflection is a key part of the inquiry process. Participants reflect publicly on the implementation of the inquiry activity in their classrooms in the discussion forum. A private reflection on the inquiry process is submitted to the facilitator. Reflective practitioners give careful attention to their experiences and how meaning is made and justified through the inquiry process.
The learning materials for each Inquiry are built in the Melete tool. The Inquiry follows a particular sequence – Plan, Prepare, Reflect, Self-Assessment. In each inquiry the same format is used for consistency for participants. An overview begins each inquiry as a means of framing the Inquiry and presenting the big idea. In addition, each inquiry includes a checklist – a simple design feature that allows participants to understand the sequence, the expectations, and the general flow of the Inquiry. Lastly, each section of the Inquiry is broken into manageable chucks for participants. Beginning teachers are often overwhelmed with the demands of teaching, and participating in the Inquiries needs meet their needs. By creating smaller tasks, the beginning teachers have an opportunity to engage at a deeper level with the material.
Resources are also provided for each inquiry – examples, templates, etc., enhance the Inquiry. Beginning teachers have access to these resources, as well as resources shared by the rest of the community.
The seven principles by Chickering and Gamson and updated by Chickering and Ehrmann to address good practice in online education are utilized serendipitously in the design. Each inquiry is facilitated. The facilitator’s role is not only to move the conversation forward, but also to provide support for the beginning teacher engaging with the materials and the community. Facilitators use the PM tool and email beyond the discussion area to support participants. The Inquiries are based on a self-selected community of practice discussing issues of practice for beginning teachers. Beginning teachers read and post responses to their work as well as others. Another level of collaboration is the mentors. The mentors participating in an inquiry offer feedback, suggestions, ideas, encouragement, etc. to the beginning teachers as they begin to take an idea – and implement it in their classroom.
The basic premise of an Inquiry is that the beginning teacher will walk away at the end of the course with a product that has been tried, tested, offered feedback, and allows fro an opportunity to reflect upon it. The cycle used in an Inquiry promotes active learning and engagement by all participants. It also allows for feedback from a variety of participants - in a timely manner. The community offers feedback on the Plan presented so the beginning teacher can begin to develop a lesson that is based on best practices and is specific for their teaching context.
Feedback is also an integral part of the Prepare section as well. Each participant is asked to complete a self-assessment of the Inquiry. Feedback from the facilitator is a key component for beginning teachers to plan their next steps.
eMSS was designed for beginning math and science teachers. New teacher face a daunting task as they begin to hone their skills while juggling all of the roles that come with being a teacher. The Inquiries are designed as 8-week courses. Each section of the inquiry is stage released so there is time to focus on one part of the expectation deeply. This format allows for the beginning teachers to receive feedback, incorporate it into a final draft, and sometimes even have one more peer review before applying it in the classroom. This practice allows for constructing high quality lessons, high expectations, and meeting the needs of all learners.
The Inquiries have evolved over a seven-year period. During that evolution, inherent design flaws were evident and remedied. It is still an ongoing process. Feedback from participants has driven the current design and continual refinement and utilization of the Sakai tool set is helping to drive the next iteration. In designing the Inquiry courses, there are three factors that are considered. They are a) ease of navigation b) consistency and clarity in the Inquiry structure c) engaging the learner.
Navigation issues are always a challenge. Using too many tools overwhelms the user, but not enough makes for a bland presentation. Linking discussions directly to the resources, using the Melete tool for the overall Inquiry course sequences, directions, tasks, etc., allows for one place for all the information in a format that is more graphically pleasing to the user of a text-based course.
As beginning teachers can select up to three Inquiry course per year, it is imperative the user experience is consistent time and again. Many of the navigation issues that were received via feedback have contributed to the consistent look and feel in all Inquiries. Formatting, style guides, discussion forums, self-assessments, etc. and clear and consistent in each inquiry
An area that needs further development is incorporating a variety of media into the Inquiries. . While links to external websites that illustrate examples are used frequently in the Inquiries, multimedia has not yet been utilized. As the goal of the eMSS program is to influence the teaching practice of beginning teachers, videos of teachers in action using pedagogical best practices will be included in future inquiries. Using a variety of multimedia will enhance the user experience.
As the Inquiry course offered through the eMSS program is an innovative approach to offering a course, therefore it doesn’t fit within the limitations of the rubric criteria. The course is offered through the University Of California – Santa Cruz Extension. Within the course registration information are links to the UC-Ext site and contains information about transcripts, grades, etc. The way the Inquiry courses are designed, the facilitator plays a key role in disseminating information about requirements, expectations, etc. This information is posed in the resources tool, is an informational post by the facilitators, and is included in the beginning teacher handbook.
The eMSS program uses Sakai in an innovative way, as a nationwide professional development network to support beginning math and science teachers. This community, created entirely within Sakai and using the integrated tools, has been developed using best practices in instructional design. The positive impact eMSS has had on beginning math and science teachers is validated through independent studies conducted by Horizon Research, Inc. This objective, third-party research has shown that eMSS has had a significant impact on:
• Preparedness to teach challenging courses and curricula
• Ability to teach content
• Preparedness in basic teaching and classroom management skills
• Teacher satisfaction
eMSS provides content-specific support to secondary math and science teachers by leveraging an online technology network to extend flexible, personalized, content-specific support to beginning teachers nationwide. eMSS brings together new teachers, expert teachers, and university faculty all focused on improving math and science teaching.
eMSS and the Inquiry component is more than a course. It is community of practice focused on a common goal and building connections with other teachers. This develops the idea of connectivism in which everyone plays a role in constructing new knowledge. eMSS goes beyond the traditional online course and addresses learning in a digital age. eMSS is an example of forward thinking and how Sakai can be used to support and engage a community of practice.
Online content specific mentoring has been tried, but never successfully to scale until eMSS. Developing partnerships with educational agencies, university programs, and districts, allows eMSS to take the power of Sakai and teacher professional development to new levels.
The Inquiry courses, part of eMSS, are a part of a yearlong community of practice focusing on supporting beginning teachers delivered using Sakai. Using multiple worksites for the program and the tools within Sakai, allows the eMSS program to meet specific program goals. It is a robust program that allows a great deal of user choice and selection of content – all immediately applicable to the classroom.
Since 2002, eMSS has had a significant impact on the nation’s education community. We have:
• Worked in all 50 states
• Influenced the education of more than a quarter of a million students
• Mentored more than 1,500 new teachers
• Trained more than 500 mentors
eMSS is innovative in its intent and design, and Sakai is the technological foundation used to move the program forward.
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