Professional learning communities (PLCs)—teams of educators who meet regularly to exchange ideas, monitor student progress, and identify professional learning needs—reflect a growing interest in promoting professional development that engages teachers and administrators. Increasingly, teachers are able to participate in online and hybrid PLCs in addition to PLCs that meet face-to-face.
A new report from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory for the Institute of Educational Sciences examines:
- Characteristics of PLCs, as reported in the literature
- Advantages and challenges of online and hybrid PLCs, compared to face-to-face PLCs
- Considerations for the design and setup of online and hybrid PLCs.
Here are some of the results of the findings:
- Do online PLC’s work?
- Yes, “the literature finds that teachers who collaborate online are engaged with the group, develop a sense of community, improve their knowledge of subject and pedagogical content, and intend to modify their instructional practices accordingly.”
- What are the advantages of online PLC’s?
- Flexibility
- Timeliness
- Comprehensiveness
- Encouragement of self-reflection
- What are the disadvantages of online PLC’s?
- Teachers do show less motivation to participate than face-to-face PLC’s.
- What practices do the literature suggest are best practices?
- structuring collaboration
- allowing participants to shape the goals, structure, and assessment of the collaboration
- pairing experts with less experienced learners
- designing activities that promote self-reflection
The paper concludes that while there are some preliminary positives about online PLC’s, educators’ thinking about online PLC’s has not moved beyond the scope of traditional PLC’s. In other words, more time will be required to truly evaluate their impact, but in the meantime, blended traditional and online PLC’s seem to offer the most promise.
Read a summary of the report or the full report at:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=368
