PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT EVALUATION REPORT 1
Professional Development Evaluation Report
Midori Grahl
EDT531
The University of Michigan-Dearborn
Abstract
Professional development (PD) on effective technology use was held at Douglas Elementary School with just one participant for the duration of four weeks from late October to mid-November of 2010. The PD was carefully designed to fit the participant’s and the district’s needs by addressing the critical components of an effective PD.There were four phases in this PD;the needs assessments phase to determine the focus areas of the PD; the proposal phase to design critical components of the PD; the implementation phase to conduct PD activities by activating the built-in formative evaluation, and the evaluation phase to conduct an evaluation survey and follow-up visits to assess the PD in the five hierarchal levels for its effectiveness. There are two practical recommendations for improvement and/or future implementation of this PD.
Introduction
From late October to mid-November I met with Mrs. Shaw, a Japanese teacher at Douglas Elementary in Garden Cityfor the purpose of implementing a professional development (PD) on effective technology use. There were total of five 30-munite meetings plus online discussions. The PD is focused on training the participant to develop lesson plans targeting the grade specific Michigan Educational Technology Standards (METS) using a free audio-visual online tool called VoiceThread.Since I was not employed in the district I decided to contact teachers I was acquainted with. Initially I intended to include all the Japanese teachers in the district but most of the teachers except for Mrs. Shawwere not able to participate, which resulted in having only one participant in the PD. In this report I will briefly discuss on the four different phases of the PD, which are needs assessment, proposal, implementation, and evaluation phases. In the last section of this report, based on the evaluation, recommendations will be discussed for future revision and implementation of this PD.
Method
In order to design my PD tofit the needs of the participant and the district, needs assessments were conducted in the forms of reviewing “Garden City Public Schools Wayne County RESA Technology Plan,” interviewing the building personnel, surveying the participant’s interest area and technology competency, and the building’s technology environment. In the Needs AssessmentI identified the following facts and needs:
1. The district’s needs in promoting further use of technology currently available in the schools, aligning technology integration with METS, and training the teachers to facilitate students’ technology literacy in the core-curriculum contents ( Technology Coordinating Commitee, 2009)
2. The teacher’s interest in audio-visual aspects of Internet use
3. The building’s well equipped technology environment as one computer with Internet connection and a projector in every classroom
The results and findings from the needs assessments determined the PD’s main goal and activity goalsas follows:
PD Goal: Develop technology integrated lesson plans based on Grades 3-5 METS
Activity Goals:
1. Acquaint the participant with the 3-5 grades METS and the district’s expectation toward the standards and the core curriculum teachers’ role.
2. Familiarize the participant with basic operations of VoiceThread
3. Familiarize the participant with two types of educational VoiceThread application; collaboration and presentation.
The proposal addressed each components of an effective PD outlined in “Critical Issue: Providing Professional Development for Effective Technology Use”(Rodriguez, 2000). During the proposal phase, data gathering methods for evaluating the PD were determined by consulting “Guideline for Evaluating Professional Development”(North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.b). Formative evaluation was built in the PD activities such as discussions and the participant’s technical performance during the meetings and online communication, and summative evaluation was also built in the development of the lesson plan, an exit survey, and planned follow-up visits with the participant. Meetings were scheduled on two Mondays and Tuesdays during the lunch break with one week interval of an online session due to the district wide PD.
The first two face-to-face meetings were held in the school’s media center and the rest of the sessions were held in Mrs. Shaw’s classroom. During the implementation, several modifications were made regarding the order of the PD activities and topicsso that the PD would conclude within the planned weeks. Evaluating information obtained from the discussions with the participant and from the online session, it became necessary to add an extra 30-munite session to conclude the PD. At the end of the PD a surveywas given to the participant to evaluate the PD activities and following the final meeting two 30-minute follow-up visits were made to further evaluate the overall effectiveness of the PD and to offer assistance to the participant in preparing her first VoiceTread lesson.During this evaluation phase, the PD was evaluated in the hierarchal order described in “Five Levels of Professional Development Evaluation”(North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.b)
Result
By reviewing the lesson plan Mrs. Shaw developed during the PD (appendix A) and our discussion during the follow up visit, the PD goal to develop lesson plans based on METS was met. The result of the survey (appendix B) reveals the participant’s overall satisfaction with the PD and her positive attitude toward the technology standards. Mrs. Shaw responded that her future technology integrated lessons would be tied to METS. The hierarchal evaluation reveals positive results in the first three levels that assess respectively the participant’s reaction, learning, and the organizational support(North Cenetral Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.a). The assessment results in these three levels are supported by the participant’s product, verbal discussion, and the report made by the participant that she obtained an immediate response from the IT department regarding the technical issue she had been experiencing. The final two levels that assess theparticipant’s use of new knowledge and the students’ learning outcomes(North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.a) are currently in the process of evaluation as the participant has not reached the actual implementation phaseof her VoiceTread lesson.
Discussion
Drawing upon the summative evaluation discussed in the section above, the participant and I had satisfactory and successful experiences in the PD. However, it is regrettable that the result of Mrs. Shaw’s first VoiceThread lesson is not available to thoroughly assess her use of new knowledge and skills. Although the students’ learning outcome should show “the end result of the professional development activity”(North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.a), such result is only meaningful when considerable time has passed and more than a single lesson has been implemented after the PD as Rodriguez (2000) cites substantial change in teaching practice takes several years. Therefore a modification in the time frame of the entire PD including the evaluation phase is a reasonable and practical recommendation for a future implementation so that the evaluation can be made when the data to assess is matured. Another recommendation to further enrich the participant’s experience and eventually encourage change in practice in much larger scale is to increase the numbers of participants. It should encourage and provide the collegial learning environment during and after the PD. According to Rodriguez, strategies to achieve this task are to mandate participation and to use an incentive program. One teacher who developed and implemented a PD reported that she was able to maintain the participants’ active participation by having her PD sessions during the weekly staff meeting with an administrator’s support (Brown, 2010, October 19). Rodriguez (2000) states; “The only way to ensure that all students have the same opportunities is to require all teachers to become proficient in the use of technology in content area to support student learning.” Therefore as I planned initially, it is desirable to include all the district Japanese language teachers or teachers in the same building if it is not feasible.
References
Brown, E. (2010, October 19). Inplementation phase. Message posted to
Technnology Coordinating Commitee. (2009). Garden City Public Schools Wayne County RESA technnology plan. Retrieved from schools.com.
North Central Educational Laboratory. (n.d.a). Five levels of professional development evaluation. Retrieved from
North Central Eduational Laboratory. (n.d.b). Guidelines for evaluating professional development .Retrieved from
The State of Michigan. (2009). 2009 Michigan educational standards for students grades 3-5. Retrieved from:
Rodriguez, G. (2000). Critical issue: Providing professional development for effective technology use. Retrieved from
Appendix A
(Mrs. Shaw’s VoiceThread Lesson Plan Draft)
Appendix B