Facilitating the Use of Records of Practice in Support of Teacher Learning

Facilitating the Use of Records of Practice in Support of Teacher Learning

Grant:
Instructional Development Fund (IDF)
Academic Year:
2012 - 2013 (June 1, 2012 through May 31, 2013)
Funding Requested:
$500.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
ksuzuka
tboerst
Overview of the Project:
We propose to use IDF funding to cover expenses for instructors in the School of Education's Elementary Master of Arts with Certification Program to explore the use Edthena, a web-based tool that supports feedback and interaction around records of teaching practice – particularly classroom video. We request $500 to pay for a "program staff license" that will allow instructors to experiment with the features of Edthena and to work productively with records of practice submitted by students learning to be teachers – who we call, "Interns," – across a 15 month program.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

We hoped to achieve several goals by supporting instructors’ use of Edthena with interns that include: • Providing timely and practice-grounded feedback on teaching to interns • Encouraging interns to use records of practice to reflect, collaborate with peers, and complete teacher education coursework • Developing ways to make our work with records of practice easy, secure, affordable, and sustainable (including planning for integrated student fees and program budgets) • Exploring the instructional possibilities of a system that remains in place across an entire program • Learning about the nature feedback that instructors give on practice shown in the videos • Learning about the nature (content, frequency, form) of supports that instructors use and/or request when working with Edthena These are broader goals that go beyond the use of this specific tool that enable us to carry out work that has been difficult in the past, explore new educational possibilities for our interns and instructors, and learn about the types of supports and resources that are needed to do this type of work going forward.

Project Achievements:

In total, over 950 videos (70 GB) were uploaded into Edthena – including commentary and other documentation – that captured interns’ engagement with teaching during the 2012-2013 academic year. The instructor accounts we were able to purchase with funding from CRLT, allowed instructors to support interns’ use of Edthena and routinely provide timely feedback, tied to specific moments, on the videos.

Continuation:
This effort has expanded and continues to develop, affecting more students, faculty, courses, and programs. Since the time of this CRLT-supported project, there have been hundreds of students and scores of instructors (now including field-based partners, such as mentor teachers) working on teaching practices with the Edthena platform. During the subsequent 2013-2014 academic year we have – Integrated Edthena fees into the program, developing what we believe will be a sustainable model for funding this into the future – including lab fees that cover student accounts and program support for working with the videos over time Expanded to span the entire Elementary Teacher Education program – including field supervisors, mentor teachers as well as an additional program (the undergraduate program) and far more courses We have also moved on to focus on developing improved processes for preserving and accessing these records of practice for further use by program faculty and staff
Dissemination:
We have discussed our work with Edthena in talks at the School of Education, during meetings with visiting scholars, and at national conferences like the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
Advice to your Colleagues:
This work was undertaken to address widely acknowledged problems associated with using video to support the learning of interns, so we had solid initial buy in from instructors. For example, Edthena provided: • ease of use (uploading, accessing, viewing, and commenting) • security for storing and sharing video • various forms of online support (including screen captures that would allow Edthena support staff to “see” issues instead of requiring people to describe all facets of an issue) • ability for instructors and interns to have extended interactions on particular moments in the video Although there is room for improvement, we have been very happy with the Edthena platform. We also found success with developing targeted local support, including: • introductory sessions for instructors and students • support team email to provide additional support by individuals who knew more about the inner workings and obligations of our teacher education programs
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