The Digital Learning Transition Week 3 – Goals

Eric Mack and Tim Casey 

Thursday was another great day of discussion and collaboration as folks in the VT office and online teachers got together to review two VT school’s goals in the digital learning transition. A special thanks to Lisa Gustinelli and Heather Benedetto for leading the discussion this week as well as our teachers who gave valuable insight.

This week’s unit prompted schools to create goals for the digital learning transition and for MOOC participants to give feedback. We picked two VT schools to look at their goals.  Making pedagogical or curricular changes that result in more effective teaching practices and learning outcomes is a significant concern of these participants.  .  The roadmap to reaching such goals in often unclear, so  as group we created a digital transition framework to help  schools create goals for digital learning. Given our own expertise in World Languages, we discussed world languages in our example, however, we think this framework is equally applicable to other disciplines.

               

1. Review current practices. Where are your strengths and weaknesses? What resources do you have or could obtain within your constraints, both financial and human?

               

2. Define best practices for your field for use of technology. Use both current standard such as ACTFL and MLA as well as research on future trends and their success as a whole and subject specific.

               

3. Gap Analysis - Review where you school currently stands (1) to best practices and emerging techniques (2).  Look at how technology can support the standards (ACTFL).

               

4. Define parameters for you goals.

                                4.1 What supports do you need in place?

                                4.2 What access to resources and results do you have?

Resources we discussed that would be beneficial to develop of goals and curriculum are central database of curriculum to support best practices (could be MIL courses), Professional Development that includes regular meetings, online communities, online courses, Professional Learning Communities (PLC).

               

                5. Create goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and 

                Timely (SMART) 

5.1 Remember that for NC STATE setting a goal is a big first step, so let’s be easy on the MOOC Instructors for not setting a solid framework for goal creation.

6. Communication to various stakeholders

                                6.1 Continued communication through implementation and
                                execution

               

Our hope is that our work will not only assist schools in this process, but also serve as a framework for how we as a company can better support our own teachers, teachers using our products and all world language teachers in this transition to digital learning.

Remember to share your thoughts, praises and criticisms below in the comment section.