Strategic Professional Development for Busy Teachers: Profile of a High-Impact Instructional Design
Keywords:
blended format; instructional design; teacher; professional development; STEMAbstract
This NASA-funded professional development project offered
Nevada middle school and high school teachers training to support the
use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in the secondary STEM
curriculum. The project took place during the academic school year and
- due to time constraints among teacher-participants - challenged
organizers to design a professional development experience that would
provide essential preliminary safety information and encourage
participant-collaboration while making the most of a limited number of
hours available for in-person training. In an effort to extend the benefits
of the project, teachers completing the training took part in a lesson
planning competition, leading to prizes and publication of the top
UAS/STEM lesson plans. The training provided opportunities for
teachers to master essential safety information, connect with one
another, explore flight simulation activities, fly drones, plan lessons, and
deliver new curriculum and experiences to students in middle and high
school settings. The design of the project was unique in its inclusion of
strategic design elements that ranged from an online course site with
FAA/safety content and quiz to a keynote/dinner presentation, handson workshops, a lesson plan competition, webinars, and a circulating
curriculum kit that provided lesson plans and instructional materials to
secondary STEM teachers requesting the kit. With limited funds and a
total of ten hours of in-person instructional time, this thoughtfully
constructed training leveraged online resources, received high ratings
from participating teachers, and exceeded its goal of reaching over 1000
students at the middle school and high school level.
https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.10.14
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Copyright (c) 2019 Sarah Elizabeth Bryans-Bongey, Craig Rosen
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