Teachers and students use the Internet for learning. Online situated professional development learning affords all the opportunity “to learn when, where, and how it is most convenient” (Wolfe & Oliver, submitted). Upon close study, an optimal criteria has been developed to guide and enhance technology professional development training and programs.
It is increasingly important for teachers to have high quality, time sensitive, and effective professional development to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change. When teachers have opportunities to participate in technology professional development programs that are personally relevant, they improve their teaching (Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Glazewski, Newby & Ertmer, 2010). It is also important for teachers to have access to free or low-cost options for learning about technology given budgetary constraints in many schools.
Current models of technology professional development exist to improve teachers’ technology usage, however traditional professional development can be costly in a time of tightening budgets, impractical in assuming teachers can meet synchronously at the same time, and inapplicable given many workshops are designed generically to reach across grade levels and content areas rather than to be applied by individual teachers in their own classroom setting.
Many educators have expressed concerns over the costs of traditional professional development. Holmes, Polhemus, and Jennings (2005) note that cost-efficiency and sustainability issues “often haunt professional development programs” (p. 384). Stranack (2012) states that, “one of the first items to go during a time of financial restraint is the professional development budget line, limiting the availability of work-funded conference participation, travel, journal subscriptions, and course fees” (p. 1). Little and Housand (2011) conclude that teacher integration of technology in the classroom is lacking, “partially because of funding and resource issues” in regards to professional development (p. 19).
Other researchers have shared their concerns with the practicality of traditional professional development. Russell, Carey, Kleiman, and Venable (2009) cite limitations of traditional professional development including being “expensive and impractical to deliver” when all teachers would need to meet synchronously (p. 71). Indeed, many teachers cannot attend professional development at the same time due to different duty hours and responsibilities, meetings, leadership expectations, extra-curricular activities, and more (Cuban, 2001).
A third concern with traditional professional development is a lack of applicability when workshops are pitched generically to teachers across grade levels and/or content areas.
Given all of these concerns with costs, practicality, and applicability, not surprisingly many teachers are increasingly turning to situated or job-embedded professional development that they can complete for free or low-cost in the context of their own classroom (Marrero, Woodruff, Schuster & Riccio, 2010). Costa (2009) describes how characteristics of the Web encourage situated professional development approaches:
Although learning online is not the only route individuals should be seeking as to update or acquire new skills, the fact is that web environments do prove to be a rich source for continuous development, free of scheduled programmes, contrived curricula or restricted to a specific location or time zone. We can thus say that Web 2.0 Learning Environments have become quite liberating in the way they allow individuals interested in pursuing their own learning, their own way, at their own pace and with their own adopted communities and/or networks (p. 27).
Professional development that is situated in the context of a teacher’s own classroom has the potential to deeply impact teachers’ attitudes and use of technology through personal training and support (Kopcha, 2012). These professional development models are “situated in particular physical and social contexts, . . . social in nature, and . . . distributed across the individual, others, and tools” (Swan, Holmes & Vargas, 2002, p. 2). Teachers can benefit from models to “guide them through the necessary changes they will need to be successful in integrating new technology into their classroom” (Keengwe & Onchwari, 2009, p. 216). One example is Intel Teach to the Future, an online program that seeks to support teachers in the integration of technology in the classroom. More than forty hours of training are available and separated into ten modules that can be completed from one to ten weeks. Participants can choose when and where to complete their work and end the course with a capstone evaluation (Harris, 2005). Module choices range from Thinking Critically with Data to Assessments in 21st Century Classrooms to Collaboration in the Digital Classroom, among others. An important aspect of the program is a focus on the teacher participant’s own classroom, where they, “are called on to define and create parts of the training experience so that it will meet their local needs and make the core concepts immediately useful and relevant to their classroom teaching” (Harris, 2005, p. 3).
After studying the experiences of six middle school science teachers’ needs during self-learning with two Online situated technology professional development programs, a criterion for optimal online situated technology professional development was created. The four optimal areas (Guidance, Personalization and Choice, Socialization, and Time), based on feedback from teacher participants, may be used to enhance current and future technology professional development training and programs.