Paper About Teacher Professional Development in Online Courses

What is professional development? In education, the term professional development might be utilized as a part wide range of special training, formal training, or modern professional training, to help teachers enhance their professional information, ability, expertise and effectiveness. In the field of online education, it is ability of teachers to develop their skills according to students need and cope with the rapidly changing technology with the passage of time.

In Online teaching, professional development of teachers is very important, it can be beneficial as it increases the flexibility of time, location, digital information, literacy, helps to get wide range of ideas and unlimited online resources.

On the other hand, if teachers are not professionally trained, there can be number of flaws like: lack of communication between teachers and student, unable to understand the psychology of student, lack of proper attention to all student, unable to develop their abilities, can’t deal with limited facilities such as library, practical lab, problem with isolation of students, unable to develop professional tone for student etc.

Here is the list of skills that need to incorporate in order to develop professional tone among teachers for online courses:

Skills that need to Develop among Teachers for Online Course

Enhance the training and information in Teacher’s subject:  Up-to-date with new scientific theories and extending their information, or to learn how to teach particular subjects more effectively. It is very important for teachers to enhance their knowledge for development of professional tone. It will help teachers to engage more students by answering their questions; it is only possible when teacher has excessive knowledge of his subject.

Adapting new technological skills: In online teaching, it is key point that teachers need to incorporate in their skill for professional development to adopt new technologies and to get command over it. It will not only ease them but will also engage students and develop their interest.

Conducting activity research: It is very important for professional development of teachers, to conduct online activity research in order to gain better understanding of what strategies are working or not working in an online academic course and afterward utilizing these findings to enhance quality of education and results

Pairing new teachers with experienced:  It is very important for new teachers to pair up with "mentor educators" or "instructional Coaches" who display effective teaching methodologies, motivate less-experienced teachers to new thoughts and abilities, and provide professional tone.

Creating particular skills to better educate and help students: for example, students with learning disabilities, or students who are not good in English.

Working with partners: It plays key role towards success in professional development of teachers if they work in groups, or make professional learning groups, to create teaching abilities cooperatively or make new interdisciplinary courses that are educated by groups of at least two or more teachers. Thus it will help them to discuss and sort out problems and difficulties by mutual coordination.

Here are following ideas to develop professional development tone among teachers for online courses:

Ideas to Develop Professional Development among Teachers

1. The Education Conference: It is very important for teachers to arrange education conferences for professional development. Regardless of time limitation, either it is one-day or one week long, arranging online education conference will be beneficial for both teachers and students. It will develop communication and relationship among them and will also help to find out solution of common facing problems and sharing of information. Thus it will also help to develop professional skills. 

2. The Webinar: On any given day, there are about more than thousands of 30-90 minute live online classes on any subject or topic. Some are price-based whilst others are free. It is simple to host them and easy to attend. They may be a quick way to research or discover a new topic. Which provide information relevant to subject as well as to develop skills in management, to build study environment, to find and sort out students’ problems etc. Thus teachers must attend online Webinar seminars for their professional development of teaching skills.

 3. Corporate-sponsored Training Programs: It includes, Google Certified Teachers, Online Teaching Program, The Apple Distinguished Educator Program, The Adobe Education Leaders Program, or any other similar programs.  Acceptance of these can be competitive and will develop powerful ways to learn and network with other different instructional innovators and will also help teachers to get motivated towards their work and to develop professional skills of teaching.

4. Video Tutorials: Video tutorials also play an important role for professional development of the skills among teachers. Video tutorials include databases of short video tutorials on how to use software or how to apply new teaching and learning strategy over students. Of course, even YouTube videos can be a valued in learning experience for teachers today.

5. The Virtual Conference: The concept of virtual conference is great way for the professional development of teachers for online courses. In order to develop the concept of the Virtual conference, it requires a tool such as computer, laptop etc and an internet connection. It could consist of presenters and participants from everywhere within the world, and they may be frequently inexpensive or free, giving an advantage that a number of the periods are recorded for overview, reuse and even sharing with colleagues etc. Thus concept of virtual conference is great idea for the professional development of skills of teachers.

6. The Faculty Meeting Show and Tell: It is simple concept, but it is the one of best ways of extending professional development among teachers. There should set faculty meeting of around 10 to 20 minutes on weekly or monthly basis. Thus it will help teachers to share their strategies and exchange their information and collect best ideas to deal with online teaching. Rest teachers can ask questions, give suggestions, and may get courage enough to try themselves.  This is an interesting way to develop teacher-teacher interaction.

7. The Twitter Chat: There is a group of those people who choose to meet over twitter at a particular time and discuss about their topic with their seniors and their colleagues and students like a hash tag like #education, in order to involve other people in conversation. So teachers can also get benefits from it.  

8. The Teaching and Learning Coach:  This is great idea to pair single teachers or group of teachers with a coach, who works with the group to refine crafts of teaching.  It may include class observations, meetings to review, and brainstorming, manage class, lesson plans etc. This task is sometimes attempted by administration.  In the digital age, using a virtual coach is a great option for the development of professional skills among teachers.  Even the lecture room observations are possible with little more than a laptop microphone and webcam.

Generally speaking, professional development is thought to be the essential system that can help teachers continuously learn and improve their skills over time. In recent decades, this topic has been broadly researched and numerous strategies and skills have been developed to improve the quality and effectiveness of professional skills of teachers for development of modern strategies online.