You hit the nail right on the head.  Online is much more convenient and will get to more people
 
Carol
 
Carol R. Clark
Workforce Learning Link
429 Lewis Street 
PO Box 189
Somerset, NJ 08875
732-846-9888 x 126
FAX 732-846-7569
email: cclark at webmail.hcesc.com

________________________________

From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Katrina Hinson
Sent: Wed 5/16/2007 7:34 AM
To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1138] Participation,Engagement and Completion



I've been reading through the emails on this the topic of online
professional development.  Don't get me wrong, I love f2f interactions
and workshops but at the same time, I'm a huge advocate for an online
professional development community.  Because we have so many part time
instructors who work full time jobs and can't attend training when the
rest of us might be able to - getting the bulk of our staff to gether at
any given time is extremely difficult.  When we try Saturday training,
we may get 15-20 people to show up but the others  refuse to come.  What
I'm learning is that the same reasons that people have for not attending
a f2f workshop often are the same reason they don't want to participate
in an online learning environment - time.  In my area, we have a large
number of part time instructors who all work additional jobs or who take
care of aging/elderly relatives when they're not teaching for us.  They
already feel that there is too much on their plate and one more option
of any kind just won't fit.

One of the things we've tried to implement is caputring a f2f workshop
in digital format and uploading it as a powerpoint slide or video clip
depending on how we captured the data, and then making that available
for people who could not attend the actual workshop. We're also looking
at how to provide online professional development opportunities for our
instructors on an ongoing basis.

One of the obstacles that we face is dealing with coordinators and
administrators who do not see the computer as a tool or resource but see
it as a negative. These people tend to want nothing to do with the
computer and would prefer that the students have nothing to do with them
too.  Finding ways to help bridge this gap has been difficult.

We haven't really considered the guidelines we'll put in place when we
get a formalized online program in place. At the moment, it's all a work
in progress- but one of the things we would like to see if a portfolio
of ideas from the participants who participate in the online
professional development - we want to see that they've taken something
that they've learned, modified it and made it their own. Likewise, we
want to see instructors in f2f workshops doing the same thing.
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