ID_+Thought+Provoker+7

Thought Provoker 7 Prompt

After reading Chapter 7 of Helping Teachers Teach, describe ways in which you would assess the needs of your colleagues in a school setting to determine the most appropriate content and delivery format for inservice materials that you might develop.

__Definition of Audience for Instruction__--professors who are about to teach in an online program. They have face-to-face experience, but they haven't received global training in teaching online.

Because I don't have a lot of resources (especially time!), I would follow the "Small-scale Needs Assessment" delineated from pp. 80-84 of Turner and Riedling's //Helping Teachers Teach// text.

__Phase 1__: I would generate a list of the content that I wanted instructors to master. I would state this list as goals. The main sources of information I would employ are peer-reviewed studies that offer suggestions as to what types of skills novice online teachers need to have taught. As far as I know, there are no research-based standards that could offer detailed guidance in this area, but I might do a quick search just to be sure. I would want a copy of all faculty's syllabi, as it would provide me with an idea of the types of content they are attempting to teach online. I would also solicit faculty feedback (attitudes and skills) via a short survey.I would seek the assistance of others who have designed such programs, such as my colleagues at the Distance and Distributed Education Center, who have experience with delivering online course training. Alone again, I would strive to create a course that is tailored to two philosophical aspects: first we would rely on authoritative sources to design our course. Second, I would also use feedback from faculty's syllabi and the survey to determine what needs to be taught and how. I would prioritize the goals. My final output would be a "list [of] the goals that represent a constrained universe of the content that ought to be mastered by the students" (Turner & Riedling, 2003).

__Phase 2__:Here, my goal would be to rank the goals established in Phase 1 in order of importance. I would use the "card sorting" approach to ranking wherein I would write each goal on a card, and create multiple piles that represent a ranking from "more desired goals" to "less desired goals." I get the sense that the text wants us to be working collaboratively with others on this. Realistically, I might be working on it alone. But, I might be able to find a collaborator in one of my IT colleagues. :) The output from this effort is a revised list of ranked goals.

__Phase 3__: Here, my goal is to determine the needs of the students. I need to determine what they already know. I can do this through "systematic behavioral analysis and the intuitive approach. For my purposes, since I don't interact with these faculty (the students) daily, and therefore don't have a great grasp of their skills and attitudes, I would probably rely most on the intuitive approach.

__Phase 4__: In this phase, I need to prioritize the needs of the students. I would do this using intuitive ranking, since I am mostly assessing needs by myself. Goals may be high in priority, but if the resources needed to achieve them are lacking, then they may lose their priority position.

References Turner, P. M. & Riedling, A. M. (2003). //Helping teachers teach: A school library media specialist’s role//. 3rd ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.