This is my presentation from BB World 09 in Washington, D.C. I presented on my lessons learned in transitioning our f2f professional development to the online environment.

1. Ensuring High Quality Online
Professional Development
Paty Savage
Instructional Technology Director
The Schultz Center for Teaching and
Leadership

2. What will you learn in this session?
• Yes
– Some practical strategies you can immediately apply in your
online professional development implementation
– Tips and lessons learned
– Standard procedures for moving F2F PD to online
– Review process
– Deployment tips
• No
– Blackboard training
– Our institutions' specific outcomes and goals

3. The Schultz Center for Teaching and
Leadership
• Professional Development facility in NE Florida
• Our Theory Of Action
• Duval County Public Schools
• Our “students” are teachers and administrators
• Expansion - Blackboard Academic Suite
• “Army of one”

4. Topics for Today
• Planning
• Development
• Review Process
• Deployment
• Administration
• Business
• Ideas

5. The Planning Stage
• IT Department Support and Stakeholder Buy-in
• Blackboard Training
• Standard Operating Procedure for Online Course
Development
• Identify Blackboard experts/course designers
• Identify Subject Matter Experts (SME)
• Over-communicate
– Online course review rubric
– Planning tools
– Examples of exemplary online courses

6. Planning Stage – “Gotcha’s”
• Ownership – information silos
• Importance of scaffolding
• Gathering of appropriate materials
• Copyright considerations
• Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives
• No variety of content planned for

7. The Development Stage
• Online Course Review Training
• Distribution of rubric
• Develop course template based on rubric
– Identify what cannot be deleted
– Provide training in using the template
– Course shell
• Identify the teams and get them writing
• Regularly “check in” – look for opportunities for
interaction, appropriate discussion board prompts, and
materials.

8. Development Stage – “Gotcha’s”
• Too many assignments, quizzes, and readings
• Busy work
• Copyrighted materials – intellectual property
• Low level thinking skills
• Low level prompts in the Discussion Board
• Lack of grading criteria/rubrics
• Technical Issues
– Low level recordings
– HUGE PowerPoint files
– Large files
– Video issues

9. The Review Stage
• Online course review training
• Form review teams
– SME, instructional designers, outside member
• Review Process
– Meet
– Complete review and rubric
– Discuss if needed
– Ask writers for explanation
– Submit results and rubrics to SA
– Writers make revisions (if needed)
– SA re-review

10. Review Stage “Gotcha’s”
• Evaluation of the instructor
• Personal bias
• Veering away from the rubric
• Not enough feedback or vague feedback
• Incomplete review

11. Deployment Stage
• Indentify the “course master”
• Establish naming conventions
• Establish course ID conventions
• Establish a process for user registration and enrollment
• Orientation Meeting
• Truth in advertising – Expectations and time commitment
• Timeline for course
• Closing/archiving

12. Deployment “Gotcha’s”
• Facilitator doesn’t meet expectations
• Technical problems will happen
– Safety nets
– Technical support
• Low completion rates
– Time requirements not made clear
• No differentiation

13. System Administrator
• Monitor facilitators – provide reports
• Monitor participants – performance dashboard
• Report completion rates
• Identify completers
• Copying, handling enrollment, closing and archiving

14. Ideas for Success
• Start with a hybrid course
• Online professional book study
• Online collaboration on lesson plans
• Online professional learning communities
• Online school PLC’s – principals going “green”

15. Want more? Be green!
• Who wants to print out a handout? Instead, check out
my posts on the BbWorld ’09 Discussion Board at
Blackboard Connections (
http://connections.blackboard.com).
• I’ve posted:
– My PPT
– Online course rubric
– SOP for online course development

16. Contact Info
• savagep@schultzcenter.org
• http://www.schultzcenter.org
• http://twitter.com/patysavage