A social capital design for delivering online asynchronous professional development in a MOOC course for science teachers
Information and Learning Sciences
ISSN: 2398-5348
Article publication date: 25 June 2020
Issue publication date: 10 August 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The overarching goal of the research is to understand strategies that can support utility and access to high-quality teacher professional development (PD). This study aims to examine the design and delivery of an online asynchronous course for science teachers using the edX massively online open course (MOOC) platform. The conceptual framework considers three areas of research: high-quality PD characteristics for K12 teachers, the development of social capital and known challenges in MOOC and computer-supported collaborative learning and participation.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an empirical mixed-methods study that details the design of the PD course and implementation strategies that instantiate the conceptual framework. The authors collected three data sources from 41 teachers who completed the course. These included post course satisfaction surveys, teacher semi structured interviews and discussion board contributions.
Findings
Survey findings revealed high satisfaction among teachers in the areas of overall course design, module construction and delivery and usability of materials in teaching. Interview findings showed positive perceptions of the social capital framing in developing tie quality, trust, depth of interactions and access to expertise. Analyses of discussion board contributions also demonstrated high degrees of information exchange resulting from prompts intentionally constructed to foster collaboration.
Practical implications
This study offers a set of strategies to build networked teacher PD communities in asynchronous online PD platforms and shows promising evidence of addressing quality and access issues.
Social implications
Designing experiences to build teachers’ social capital shows promising potential to support high quality PD that may, in turn, raise the quality of science education for students and classrooms both locally in the US and globally.
Originality/value
The conceptual framework provides a novel approach to theorizing and operationalizing best practices for teacher PD and online participation.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper is part of the special issue, “A response to emergency transitions to remote online education in K-12 and higher education” which contains shorter, rapid-turnaround invited works, not subject to double blind peer review. The issue was called, managed and produced on short timeline in Summer 2020 toward pragmatic instructional application in the Fall 2020 semester.
This study was funded by a US National Science Foundation grant #1721003.
Citation
Yoon, S.A., Miller, K., Richman, T., Wendel, D., Schoenfeld, I., Anderson, E., Shim, J. and Marei, A. (2020), "A social capital design for delivering online asynchronous professional development in a MOOC course for science teachers", Information and Learning Sciences, Vol. 121 No. 7/8, pp. 677-693. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-04-2020-0061
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited