Over the past eight years, the Collaborative’s Educator Licensure Program has expanded from just 6 participants taking courses in Northampton to almost 1000 registrants a year in more than 20 different licensure programs across Massachusetts. Having grown very quickly, the Licensure Program has evolved and adapted in order to meet the continuing educational needs of the prospective educators.
The need for trained teachers and administrators in high need areas such as Special Education, English as a Second Language, Math and the Sciences continues to increase. The large majority of our students have full or part-time jobs, as well as families and other commitments. Teachers in need of high-quality and affordable professional development are also spread out across the state, some in remote areas. In order to be able to offer courses to those with time constraints and those located statewide, the program has developed more online courses.
Both staff and students had some initial concerns about entering into this new domain of online learning. There were concerns about the quality of online instruction as well as a student’s ability to connect to the class participants and instructor. A clearer solution, for a program that is driven by quality of instruction, was to take a smaller step into the world of hybrid-online courses.
Hybrid online courses combine the e-learning format of a standard online course with three face-to-face sessions. This method of teaching offers both the convenience of online distance learning, for working individuals, and the benefits of instructor and participant interactions. The community that is vital to the success of the courses can remain and even broaden, to incorporate people across the State. This is particularly important for teachers and administrators in remote locations – giving them the opportunity to connect to a larger pool of experienced individuals.
Ensuring that participants feel guided through the hybrid course process has been a focus of the Licensure Program staff. Continual course assessment and feedback has proven vital to the program’s success and continues to motivate our new direction. Student requests for more interaction with other course participants have led to moves to increase the amount of in-person session and use forums and videos to aid the instruction: tools that will strengthen the group connections.
The launch into hybrid online learning has shown some promising results. One instructor, originally hesitant about the change, enthusiastically remarked: “the QUALITY of work completed by the students was much, much better than I have seen in the recent past.” She believes that because “students see each other’s work, work in pairs and, thus review each other’s work, there is a level of “pride” displayed in completed assignments”. This is a promising start to the shift to add online learning to the traditional classroom options. The goal is to continue to develop the hybrid online component of the courses, which, together with the traditional courses, practicum, and advising thus further strengthen the quality of the program for educators and administrators statewide.
