Thanks for visiting our video! We are currently in the second year of a four-year NSF DRK12 project. Up to this point, we have been focusing on designing and creating online video-based PD modules for teachers, and have gathered usability and feasibility data from math teachers and teacher educators. We’re now beginning to transition toward our research study that will examine the preliminary impact of the modules on teacher knowledge, instructional practice and student learning.

 

As a starting point for discussion, here are some things we've been thinking about and would love your feedback on:

1. Are you doing work with online or face-to-face professional learning for mathematics teachers? If so, we would love to know more about the contexts you’re working in, what challenges or problems of practice you’ve encountered, and what you’re learning from it!
2. Would you, or educators you work with, be interested in online, video-centered professional learning? What makes this format of professional development attractive to you?
3. What module topics would you like to see in terms of mathematics content, student mathematical thinking, or pedagogy?

 

We are excited to join the conversation within this community, and you can find more information about our project at www.videointhemiddle.com.

Hi Nanette and Cathy and Elizabeth et al.,

This video is fascinating.  You state the problem so well--of the difficulty for teachers of accessing ongoing high-quality professional development.  We've been incorporating online offerings into our workshop offerings for elementary teachers over the past few years, but these are all facilitated and therefore resource-intense.  I think this format is promising--having modules that can be facilitated or used independently. I realize that you are just conducting your data collection, but I'd be interested in anything you can say so far about a) why you chose these three formats and b) what you have observed about differences among them. 

best,

Susan Jo

Hi Nanette, Cathy, Elizabeth, and Angela!  Wonderful video.  A few years ago, I worked with the Math Pathways and Pitfalls team to pilot online professional learning modules that included videos of practice.  While teachers appreciated the flexibility of interacting with the modules on their own schedules, they also expressed a pressing desire to discuss videos with one another and to receive feedback or coaching about their own classroom practice, particularly about times when the class discussion was not as smooth or productive as they hoped.  For this reason, I am excited to see that the VIM program offers options for professionally facilitated or locally facilitated PL.  I'm curious to learn more about what the facilitation supports will include.  I'm excited to see how your research progresses and to learn from your team about the benefits and challenges associated with the three models.

Thanks for sharing your video! Our project, SyncOn, (video link) has some similarities in that we are focusing on online professional development for middle grades teachers. We are in year three of our project and focused on researching synchronous professional learning experiences for rural teachers. Similar to previous comments in this thread, one thing that stood out to me from your video was the different formats for delivery (i.e. professionally facilitated, locally facilitated, individual). It looks like you haven't analyzed those data, but I am curious about participant numbers. Do teachers seems equally interested in the three formats? Do you have a greater number of participants using one format or the other? As we have been thinking about scaling up our project, we have been considering how to best do this in a way that would require less facilitation time on our end, but we have struggled with knowing what this might look like. Thanks for your sharing your project!

Julie

Hello All - great video. A process that I would find very useful in my work. We should discuss further.

 

The video is very clear and spot on with the potential challenges of continuing our own professional growth as educators!  

1. In the past, we have created online modules that help address the needs communicated in this video.  We have found that the online platforms provides access to our teachers to be able to still grow as a professional but at their own pace and time.  As mentioned in the video, having an interactive online experience is what seems to provide higher levels of engagement and teacher growth.  Video reflection submissions was one way that we chunked the PD to keep a log of the learning as a teacher went through the module. 
2. I believe our teachers would be interested in online learning as it allows for them to find the time that works best for them.  Online also provides the flexibility of differentiating the learning experience.  For example, a teacher could self-select certain modules that apply most to where they are in their career.  This selection would lessen the time being spent on topics that he/she has already mastered.  Though this may sometimes be an option for in-person professional learning, online learning provides more personalized learning. 
3. All of the above!  As professionals, we constantly need to be learning more about the content, student thinking, and pushing our pedagogical thoughts.  Depending on where we are in our careers, any combination of these topics would support our students in classrooms. 

 

Hi Nanette!

We met a few years ago in Helsinki, the CIDREE Project. It was really interesting to meet you and hear about Video in the Middle as I work with professional development for math teachers in Sweden. In the project The Boost for Matehematics we also use classroomvideos and teachers are really interested in them. It would be interesting see some of your videos.

Margareta

 

This is such important work!  Thanks Nanette for sharing.

Nice video! I like how you have built flexibility and choice into the PD. So important to instructional design and often lacking in educator professional learning. 

Hi Susan Jo!

We chose the three formats for flexibility--to potentially meet the needs of different contexts and learning preferences. We are genuinely curious about what teachers get out of each of the formats. We are just beginning our feasibility study analysis as we prepare for our RCT next year. We had 8-9 teachers in each condition that completed four 2-hour modules. In glancing over the post survey (last week), we noticed that in general people found the experience positive across all formats. Some people prefer to work independently at their own pace and others enjoy more of a collaborative experience. What surprised us a bit was how many talked specifically about what specific types of content they learned and the various instructional practices they were planning to take and use in their practice. In the RCT, we will observe classrooms to examine uptake. Please let us know if you have any other questions. (and VIM team, please add anything you think I left out)

Best,

Nanette

Very nice in the integration of strong curriculum and strong PD -- rarely see both combined so artfully.

What do you think are the opportunities and barriers for scaling up to reach more teachers? 

Hi VIM team,

Thank you for your careful work thinking about designing online PD centered around video analysis! I have a few wonderings after watching:

1. What platform are you using to design/host your modules?  It seems very flexible with different kinds of functionality!
2. Did you consider having teachers share video of their own classrooms engaging in similar tasks?  I'm curious to hear your thinking about potential affordances/challenges.

- Jen

I have also found viewing and analyzing classroom videos very valuable in both pre-service and in-service programs - but also found it very challenging to find good videos!  I especially liked the fact that you provide additional information along with the video, to make their analysis and discussion more fruitful - so I'd love to be able to make use of your videos and materials.  How do you plan to make them available to other teacher educators? 

Hello,

Thanks for sharing the video. Your project is so relevant to the work we have embarked in for teacher professional learning in City Schools. We spent this year creating grade specific videos for teachers to engage with to build content and pedagogy knowledge. We are not using classroom videos but I really like this idea as many teachers need to see what instruction should look like. Are you utilizing a specific curriculum that is aligned to the work you are doing. There is research showing the professional learning has higher yields of success when teachers are practicing what they will be teaching. 

Hi Nanette!  Thank you for sharing your work with us.  I am particulary interested in learning more about your "bridge to practice" piece in the POST video section of your online PD opportunities.  Does this section shift the focus from student interactions and students' solutions to analyze teacher moves?  I know from watching classrooms clips including my own videos of myself teaching that I tend to notice missed opportunities and cant help to wonder how asking a different question at a particular moment or selecting and sequencing the students' solutions differently would have shifted the dialogue and connections made among the students.  So I'm curious about the reflection piece.  Did you choose to include prompts that question teacher moves or questions posed by the teachers in the videos?

Hi Nanette!  Thank you for sharing this great video.  As education itself has become increasingly flexible in its delivery, especially in the higher education space, I love the focus on applying that added flexibility to teacher PD.  It also seems like this could also help to set a standard for the quality of PD that teachers from different school districts could all access.  Have you thought about issues of how you might generalize or adapt this training to teachers working in very different classroom contexts (in terms of class size, socioeconomic factors, behavioral factors, etc.)?

"Seeing it in Action" is an important and powerful component which positively impacts professional learning. MC² Summer MathLab, (video link) has similarities to your project in that we also use video. Initially we do so in the form of live videostream transmitted from student classrooms to teacher observation rooms where participants discuss, reflect, and collaborate on 1) how students learn math, 2) effective pedagogical practices, and 3) math content knowledge. In addition to video-streaming, we also record the lessons for use in other professional learning settings, such as reflecting on student discussions of their mathematical thinking and as exemplars.

One of the challenges we've encountered (but have learned from) is the integration of technology. We needed to figure out how to get the video signal from the student classroom to the observation room. Additionally, we had to find a camera with high resolution that was compatible with the wireless video system, and most importantly, that was inexpensive. The issue of capturing and integrating sound with the video signal also had to be addressed. MC² collaborated with Creative Media Institute (CMI), a partnering NMSU department. CMI faculty act as videographer supervisors and help facilitate the filming of MathLab. Local high school videography students are hired and trained on location to shoot the week-long experiences. Other lessons learned include:

• Ensuring that videographers established the correct camera angle without interfering with the student/teacher connection
• Checking that teachers did not unintentionally have their microphone in “standby" mode
• Dealing with occasional nervousness or apprehensive behavior on the part of the students and/or teachers being videotaped
• Not having backup equipment so additional equipment had to be ordered on the spot

Thank you for sharing,

Terri

Hi Nanette, Angela, Elizabeth, and team.

What an excellent video! It was great to get a guided tour to "see" what the online VIM modules look like and to better understand how teachers interact with them. You certain have figured out powerful ways to make use of classroom video to springboard conversations among teachers. Can you say a bit more about how the online communication/conversation has been alike/different from the face-to-face professional learning experience?

As you know, we work with written cases of practice and sometimes it can be hard to succinctly describe the bigger picture of a unit and and therefore where the reader/viewer drops into the classroom. For this reason, I appreciated your lesson graphs. Again, thanks.

This is such an exciting and important project! Our school district is very spread out with schools on different islands and some located in very remote areas. I could see all three formats being very helpful to our teachers but understanding which formats are better for which purposes/contexts is a big question. Also, any light you can shed on how to best optimize the different formats – as well as how to support teachers’ experiences within the different formats – would be make a huge difference. I look forward to learning from you!

One thing I was wondering is what, if any, supports there might be for designing/adapting accountability structures for the PD? For example, in our district, teachers typically need to submit a portfolio containing lesson plans, student work samples, lesson reflections, etc. in order to get credit for the PD (these credits are important for professional advancement). Are you or your pilot-testers developing portfolio or observation tools/resources/support as a part of the work? 

Thanks again for this wonderful video and your terrific work!