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On April 14, I'll present to the distance Learning breakfast group at Selleck. At that meeting, I'll try to review the research literature on Web-Teaching. I think you might keep in mind that we have some really good local resources on using the Web to teach. This list is not intended to be exclusive:
| Two models for Web-based instruction appear to meet with success. Course supplements seem to be effective, as are some complete courses available in distance mode. This talk will describe a new hybrid model in which the course organization, some instruction, and most testing are Web-based and centrally delivered, but the learning actually is managed by mentors working at numerous distant sites. The specific application of this model to nine graduate courses for high school chemistry teachers will be described. The talk will address issues related to delivering instruction into 'thin' markets |
John Markwell (UNL Biochemistry), Marj Langell (UNL Chemistry), Randy Emry (Lincoln Southeast HS), and I are close to funding on a big project that involves a fundamentally different way of providing Web-based instruction. My intent this morning is to try to explain this project.
When I left the UNL Chemistry Department in 1984, my principal concern was to focus on high school chemistry teaching. My interest in technology was very strong at that time, and there has been an apparent shift in my role from teaching science to teaching technology. In fact, I've been on about the same career track since 1968 -- the first year I used multimedia to teach laboratory classes at Texas A&M University.
The first part of this talk addresses problems with teacher preparation. Experienced college teachers of basic courses nearly always can find fault with high school teaching. The students we get always seem less than fully prepared, and college teachers tend to blame student problems on high school s and high school teachers.
It is not clear that high school chemistry teachers are less well prepared than, say, typical or average undergraduates with similar coursework.
On the other hand, it is very clear that they do not have neither enough chemistry nor enough information about teaching chemistry.
Two often cited works that deal with this issue are:
The rate at which "new" chemistry teachers enter the teaching profession is 4-10% of the total each year, or 800-2000. The number of teachers preparation schools is over 400. In Nebraska, for example, UNL, UNK, UNO, Peru, Wayne, Chadron, Wesleyan, Doane, Dana, Concordia, Midland Lutheran, and Creighton all have teacher preparation programs. As a result, the number of preservice secondary science teachers in any one program is small.
A typical small Nebraska high school will have two science teachers, perhaps one in biological sciences and the other physical sciences. It is not at all unusual for a small K-12 setting to have just one science teacher who handles everything.
Approving teachers two work in classrooms really involves two separate processes. In one process, the teacher is certified. Certifications restrict what a teacher can do, to some degree. Thus, elementary and secondary teachers receive different certifications.
In a very different process, the teacher is endorsed. A teacher might be endorsed for chemistry or physics or natural science or physical science.
The first two are called single subject endorsement, while the latter are 'broad field endorsements.'
For two reasons, programs have adopted 'broad field endorsement' schemes for teachers.
UNL's Teachers College has more or less insisted on either two single subject endorsements or one broad field endorsement so as to enhance teacher marketability.
A natural science endorsement is pretty much what a premed would take in terms of science courses to meet or just surpass med school admission requirements.
Professional scientists (chemists, physicists) often suggest that the "cure" for teacher preparedness problems is to have preservice students complete what amounts to an undergraduate major. This approach is fraught with many challenges.
To put this in simple context, UNK a few years back created a half-endorsement in computer science. (A half-endorsement usually represents 18 content hours, and requires that holders first have some other endorsement. These endorsements add on to a teacher's credentials.) In planning this, the schedule of courses called for 1 education course and 5 computer science courses. Every one of the first seven or eight students earning the endorsement used the skills garnered in preparation for the endorsement to qualify for and accept a business job; none chose teaching.
After all is said and done, teaching is one of the helping professions. Working with students can be very rewarding and inspiring. In fact, these rewards are greater for good teachers. So, teaching attracts some of the best in the US. Last semester I has a student teacher who was the best or second best I've ever supervised. She knew biology inside and out, and was very comfortable with students. I was proud to have associated with her.
Meanwhile, adverse working conditions and low salaries make teaching less often chosen by top students.
Teaching attracts many people as a second career, when they decide they don't enjoy their first chosen work. In my daughter's area (economics, especially finance), most of them have more than enough money to retire by the time they are 40. Most also plan on leaving their jobs!
The bottom line is that chemistry teachers really aren't terrific when they come out after their undergraduate years, and they need some finishing. (This probably is true of nearly every profession, even medicine where great expense leads to really effective training.)
Many teachers -- over half -- choose to go on to earn masters degrees.
There often are five courses in the high school curriculum:
AP chemistry really is college chemistry, and the AP chemistry test is much harder than the hardest of Chem 109 and 110 combined. Consumer chemistry really is bottom-of-the-line chemistry. When state legislatures a few years back decided to increase science requirements, high school chemistry teachers met with a new clientele. Consumer chemistry was the result.
Unfortunately many schools treat ChemCom as consumer chemistry. This is done in Lincoln.
A really good high school program will offer all five courses if possible.
A really good chemistry teacher will be able to handle all of these courses, and a good chemistry teacher will be able to handle at least two or three of them.
Few chemistry departments in the United States offer any programs for teachers. If their preservice involvement is less than satisfactory, they still would have teachers sign up for the same chemistry classes as their Ph.D. candidates take.
Education departments tend to offer programs that are 'content free' (my terminology). So, a chemistry teacher could move up on the pay scale by earning all Cs in college chemistry, and then earn a masters degree that never mentioned chemistry.
There is no money to change much of this. There is no money to change preservice teacher preparation. There is no money to attract teachers with stronger contents skills. There is no money to support a major intervention in graduate education for teachers.
The largest single source of money for teachers in graduate programs is the graduate tuition paid by the teachers. Teachers pay their own tuition, gambling that this investment ultimately rewards in terms of their salaries.
If one wants to change things, you need to target this money. All of the other 'rules' noted above still apply. (To make a big change, one needs to improve the overall salaries.)
I've spent a great deal of time getting to this point, hopefully laying out the dimensions of a national problem. The question we asked is, can Web-technology be used to address this problem?
Suppose a distance program is offered. Well, there are several reasons why that might not work. First, teachers really enjoy a personal touch. They perceive distance options to be impersonal. (By the way, student participants in these courses more often than not feel just the opposite about their distance experiences. Students in distance and traditional classes may come to feel 'closer' to their 'distant' classmates than to their physically adjacent classmates.) There also is a territory issue.
It makes no economic, organizational, or other sense for Nebraska to have so many teacher preparation programs. Distance programs are viewed as threats, and such threats are not new. Obviously, I think that some of the "other" programs in Nebraska should go!
While I continue to predict that top-of-the-line courses will emerge, and that national skimming will challenge the status quo, I don't see the chemistry teacher preparedness problem as one addressable in this manner ('conventional,' Web-based distance courses).
On the other hand, it boggles the mind to imagine a situation in which chemistry departments offer traditional coursework for chemistry teachers. If this really were possible, why would it not now be a common phenomenon in large cities where there is likelihood of getting 10-25 students in a course?
Boiling all of this down, my colleagues and I have proposed what amounts to a unique, distributed model. In this model, course goals and objectives, and course tests will be centralized at one national location.
Course enrollment, tuition, accrediting, etc., will remain distributed very widely across the country.
So, here's the deal. Suppose I'm a chemistry teacher (DB) from Columbia, South Carolina. I come to Bill Leonard at Clemson to set up a masters program. He suggests that I might want to include a half-dozen or so hours of content courses in my program. We look at a list, and I pick a chemistry course or two. We play around with that list just a bit -- tailoring it for me. I sign up for a Clemson course, but I start receiving e-mail from Nebraska. I log into a Nebraska site. That site provides me a curriculum, and it gives me tests. Some of my work is automatically graded at Nebraska, but the written answers are e-mailed to Leonard, and he somehow manages that. All of the tests are repeatable; I keep trying until I learn the material.
I keep plugging away, and one day I get an e-mail from Nebraska saying that the list that Leonard and I worked out together has been completed. I e-mail Bill, we meet, and then my work in the Clemson course is over.
For now, we indicate that we'll charge $25-$75 per student to provide this service. In the end, I think we'll be able to garner 'industrial' support for this. What we'll do is ask the teachers for a charge card number up front. If they don't complete the course within six months, we'll bill them $150 on their card. If they do, we'll send them a letter saying that they have received a $150 scholarship from the "XYZ" drug company, and the scholarship will cover all costs associated with their receiving course materials from Nebraska. We'll get a small gift (~$20K annually) from the "XYZ" drug company that will covers our costs. The $150 will become entirely negative reinforcement -- the bad thing that goes away when the desired behavior (successful course completion) is demonstrated.
That's the model, but with partners all over the country -- not just at Clemson.
How will this work? Well, we really don't know. Many things can go wrong.
Teachers can decline the option of "playing." This could happen for many reasons, not the least of which is that graduate education courses have the reputation of being "pud."
Colleges can decline to play. After all, this amounts to an independent study course, and it really is coming out of someone's hide.
It won't work. It may turn out that you can't really teach 'pedagogical content knowledge' this way.
On the other hand, this could turn into something large. Remember, there is not enough here to build a business on. There are too many conflicts, and there's no real money.
Two project extensions for this. The first is to try to sell the idea of setting up 6-10 national centers to run summer laboratory courses for teachers to study hs lab instruction. When planning programs, participation in one of these could become a national expectation. (There is a problem with transferring in credit. UNL takes in as much as 50% from the outside; other places take in 0%!)
Right now, the content development plan is along the lines of content topics -- like organic and biochemistry. Once modules are in hand, the same content pieces can be reconfigured into courses on, say, integrating mathematics with chemistry, or graphing calculator - probe experiments in chemistry. Once the first course arrangement is in hand, rearrangements are easy to bring about.
Already chemists have expressed interest in incorporating these materials into preservice programs. I suspect that activity will enjoy a limited amount of interest.
I hope this presentation has made some kind of sense. I hope you have an understanding of what we are trying to accomplish, and a sense of how we plan to go about accomplishing it. I'll try to take questions. Thanks.
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