A social capital design for delivering online asynchronous professional development in a MOOC course for science teachers

Abstract

Purpose The overarching goal of the research is to understand strategies that can support utility and access to high-quality teacher professional development (PD). This study aims to examine the design and delivery of an online asynchronous course for science teachers using the edX massively online open course (MOOC) platform. The conceptual framework considers three areas of research: high-quality PD characteristics for K12 teachers, the development of social capital and known challenges in MOOC and computer-supported collaborative learning and participation. Design/methodology/approach This is an empirical mixed-methods study that details the design of the PD course and implementation strategies that instantiate the conceptual framework. The authors collected three data sources from 41 teachers who completed the course. These included post course satisfaction surveys, teacher semi structured interviews and discussion board contributions. Findings Survey findings revealed high satisfaction among teachers in the areas of overall course design, module construction and delivery and usability of materials in teaching. Interview findings showed positive perceptions of the social capital framing in developing tie quality, trust, depth of interactions and access to expertise. Analyses of discussion board contributions also demonstrated high degrees of information exchange resulting from prompts intentionally constructed to foster collaboration. Practical implications This study offers a set of strategies to build networked teacher PD communities in asynchronous online PD platforms and shows promising evidence of addressing quality and access issues. Social implications Designing experiences to build teachers’ social capital shows promising potential to support high quality PD that may, in turn, raise the quality of science education for students and classrooms both locally in the US and globally. Originality/value The conceptual framework provides a novel approach to theorizing and operationalizing best practices for teacher PD and online participation.

English Teaching Quality Evaluation Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy Decision Tree Algorithm

“…Compared with other courses in colleges and universities, English teaching shows its own particularity, such as strong coherence and interaction between knowledge, which makes it more difficult to evaluate the teaching quality of courses [ 1 ]. The earliest experts used traditional statistical methods to evaluate the quality of teaching (preferably English) and selected fixed evaluation indexes to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching (preferably English).…”

Exploration on the Application Path of College English MOOCS Teaching under the Background of Internet of Things

“…Konstantinidis et al pointed out the role of Internet 0 of things technology in education, summarized the educational concept under the Internet of things, and discussed its future development prospect [ 6 ]. In order to better ensure the comfort of learning, Marques et al put forward an Internet of things solution for noncontact measurement and real-time temperature monitoring, which makes an important contribution to the infrared temperature monitoring system of the Internet of things [ 7 ]. Starting from the actual situation of College English teaching, Zhang et al discuss its countermeasures from the perspective of cultural differences, so as to provide a valuable reference for English teaching [ 8 , 9 ].…”

Online and Offline Blended College English Classroom Teaching Based on MOOC Internet Platform

“…[10,11]. In order to pass English exams or get high scores, students often perform mechanical recitation and imitation of simple language skills [12]. They are only interested in the content of the next test.…”