Measuring the Potential of Online Professional Development From gender equity to HIV prevention Impact and reach. These priorities guide our research into new professional development models. These questions are central to two of EDC's latest experiments with online professional development. WEEA developed the course two years ago and has offered it three times to curriculum developers, after-school program directors, and gender researchers, as well as teachers in both urban and suburban settings.
Many online courses focus on content knowledge and information.
This course is more about attitudes and personal ethics. Like other EDC online workshops, the discussions among participants became the centerpiece of the course content. They became a place to build a different kind of community, where teachers made connections between the course readings and their own classroom experiences. For example, course participants became very engaged in a case study about a teacher who is experimenting with different strategies for arranging students into groups that work collaboratively to solve math problems. In response to complaints that groups of boys were dominating or disrupting some groups, the teacher now strives for gender balance in each group.