Needs to be addressed and learners to be served

The field of literacy education has undergone significant change in the past decade, from a focus on phonics, to a focus on whole language and literature-based methods, and back to a focus on phonics again. In addition, tremendous advances in instructional technology have left many teachers in the dust. It is difficult for practicing teachers to keep up with these changes. The proposed course would be a way for these busy elementary school teachers to become apprised about what is happening in the field of literacy education. Furthermore, teacher licensure is also changing in Indiana. Teachers will soon be subjected to performance-based assessment. They will have to be able to demonstrate and document that they are proficient teachers of reading and writing in their elementary schools and that they can and do use technology effectively to enhance learning.

Technology is changing teaching and learning in significant ways. Teachers must learn to use it effectively to prepare their students for the future. Teachers in this course will learn to use technology to foster their professional development, but they will also learn about ways they can use it in their teaching of children.

The learners in this course will primarily be elementary school teachers. The nature of their work includes many after-school responsibilities such as grading papers, preparing for daily lessons, sponsoring after-school clubs, and coaching sports teams. These responsibilities may prohibit them from attending a class at a university taught at a particular time that would require traveling some distance. Most teachers have access to the Internet, either at school or at home, and would therefore be able to participate in an online course for which they could choose the times in which to complete the course work. The course would be especially appealing to teachers during their summer break, when they have no teaching responsibilities.

The proposed course is currently taught in the televised distance education format, and for the past three years, approximately 75% of the learners enrolled in the course have been teachers living more than an hour away from campus. Not only does the distance from the university limit their access to on-campus university courses; it limits their access to information in other ways. That is, the teachers and schools do not have opportunities to host student teachers who have university supervisors visiting them. They rarely have literacy experts visit their buildings for teacher in-service programs either. The online format gives equal access to learning opportunities to everyone in the state. The target audience is in-service teachers in the state of Indiana.

Rationale for choice of course and technology or technologies to be used

This course is well suited for the online format for a number of reasons. This course has been offered by the university as a televised distance education course for many years; the on-line fo rmat is a logical next step. The Internet currently provides multiple, high-level learning opportunities for teachers. These include 1) excellent literacy-related electronic lists sponsored by national organizations such as the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English, 2) extensive databases of literacy lessons, 3) state-of-the-art sites with information for integrating technology into the literacy program, 4) searchable sites with information for using quality children’s literacy in the elementary literacy program, 5) databases of academic resources around literacy topics, and 6) sites that allow teachers to involve their students in on-line literacy projects through internet activities, on-line literature quizzes, and participation in student e-mail projects. All of these activities will be introduced, promoted, and integrated into the proposed course. Thus, there are multiple opportunities for making use of the Internet as an integral part of the course.

This course has been offered for two semesters or more each year in the traditional format, and has previously had high enrollments in the televised distance education format. The instructor has limited the enrollment to 25 students, and the registration has always met this limit. Enrollment is currently ensured because the course is a requirement for Master’s degrees in Elementary Education, Special Education, and for teacher certification in these same categories. Because of the projected teacher shortage, it is anticipated that many people who are currently not in the education field will seek ways to become certified teachers. They will certainly need to learn how to teach reading and writing, and this course will serve that purpose. The on-line format will enable them to pursue the completion of a teaching certificate while still working full time.

The university has already provided extensive technical support to put the course on television. The Teleplex will provide an instructional designer who will work with the Project Director in all areas of course development. Various individuals will assist with course web page design, video streaming, graphics production, copyright clearances, and development of forms. The course is fully supported by the department chair and the Dean of the Teachers College.

Instructional design and delivery

The delivery of course material and activities will be facilitated through a course web page developed by the Project Director. The Project Director has already used a well-developed course web page for the televised distance education version of the course. This web page (http://web.bsu.edu/00smtancock) will be the site through which all course activities will flow. Through the web page, students will access weekly modules on the following topics: theories of the reading process, approaches to reading instruction, comprehension, phonics, vocabulary development, content area reading, diversity and literacy, process writing, reaching at-risk readers, literature-based reading instruction, basal reading instruction, technology and literacy, and assessment. For each topic, students will be involved in the following ways, depending upon the appropriateness for that topic: 1) participating in asynchronous discussion groups, 2) networking with other teachers in the class through synchronous chat groups, 3) contributing to and learning from literacy-related electronic lists, 4) viewing and evaluating video clips of literacy lessons in elementary classrooms, 5) accessing Internet sites and collecting and evaluating the information found, 6) researching topics through resources in educational databases, 7) reading on-line literacy journals, 8) planning Internet-based literacy lessons, 9) reading reviews of literacy-related educational software, and 10) finding quality Internet sites for their own classroom web pages. The modules will integrate all of the above activities, and each will be followed by an assessment module using the inQsit assessment tool offered by Ball State University. InQsit is an integrated network quizzing, surveying, and interactive testing system that allows the instructor to create on-line quizzes and surveys that will assess the students’ learning after each module. The results of the assessments will help the instructor refine and revise future modules and will provide evaluative feedback to the students. The funding requested will provide released time so that the Project Director can develop the course.

Explanation of how the instructional design will serve the needs of the target audience

The method of delivery proposed for this course will allow for statewide and nationwide access to the course materials. The use of modules will serve the needs of the target audience because the students can access the materials at times that are convenient for them. Each module will have a specified completion date, however, which will ensure that students complete the course in a time frame which best promotes learning and allows for maximum interaction among the students taking the course. Asynchronous discussion groups will allow interaction and sharing of ideas among students. The instructor will also be available once per week in a synchronous chat group for "live" interaction. Students will be evaluated after each module through inQsit, which will give them formative feedback that will help them be more successful with subsequent modules.

Course evaluation plan

The course will be evaluated in several ways. After the first module is completed, several graduate assistants in the Elementary Education department will serve as a field-testing cohort. They will act as a small “class” and move through the module, complete learning tasks, and participate in on-line discussions. They will then take the inQsit evaluation after they have completed the module. Feedback will be solicited from these students which will then be used to modify the module. The second module will then be presented to them with another opportunity for feedback and revision. Another way in which the modules will be evaluated is by another faculty member who has taught an on-line course. She will be asked to evaluate the first three modules. Third, using inQsit, students enrolled in the actual course will be given a survey to evaluate the first, second, and third modules. Changes will be made as these feedback data are analyzed. There will also be a final course evaluation. After students complete the assessment portion of each module, these data will also be analyzed for areas of strength and weakness. Fourth, the discussion group and bulletin board transcripts will be analyzed for signs of confusion, frequency of participation, and quality of thinking and writing about literacy-related topics. Fifth, the number of "hits" on the web page will be counted to determine how frequently students are accessing the course materials. Sixth, rubrics will be used to evaluate student participation in the course and to evaluate papers and projects completed as course requirements. These products and final grades will be compared to the on-campus and televised distance education sections of this course for similarities and differences. The instructor will present the development, teaching, and evaluation of the course at the annual meeting of the Association of Teacher Educators to share with others teaching the same types of courses. Using inQsit, a pre- and post-test will be given to evaluate students' knowledge about and use of technology for both professional development and for use in their work with children. Hopefully, there will be increases in each as a result of participation in this course.

Quality and/or transferability plans and/or strategies

The quality of the course will be determined through the means mentioned in #6. The strengths of the course will be used as models for the development of other courses in the department, college, and university. The Department of Elementary Education plans to use the proposed course as an opportunity for implementing groundbreaking teaching methods. Currently, there are plans to move the courses entitled, “Basic Concepts in Elementary Education” and “Research in Elementary Education” to the on-line format. The proposed course, as well as the others, serves the Ball State Master's Degree programs. They are also used for teacher certification in the state.

Information about how the course fits into other efforts in Indiana

This course is a part of the Master’s degree programs in Elementary Education, Special Education, and School Psychology. It is also required for teacher certification in these same areas.

Marketing plan

Course information will be disseminated by Continuing Education through the semester schedule booklet and through the Distance Education program information brochure, which is distributed to all school districts in Indiana. The course will also be listed in the Indiana College Network Schedule. In addition, there will be hyperlinks in the University web page that will give information concerning the course. Finally, the course will be presented to state education organizations for inclusion in their publications, such as the Indiana State Reading Association, Indiana Association of Teacher Educators, and the Indiana Association of School Curriculum Development.

Project schedule

The schedule for course development is listed below:
January, 2000 Notification of funding received
February-April, 2000 First module completed, field testing, peer review
May-June, 2000 Revision of first module, second module completed, field testing
July-August, 2000 Revision of second module, third module completed, field testing
September-December, 2000 Completion of all ten modules
January, 2001 (Spring Semester) Course offered, revisions made on ongoing basis as course proceeds

Key course development personnel

• Project Director - Susan M. Tancock, Associate Professor in the Department of Elementary Education, is currently the instructor for the TV version of the proposed course. Her role is course development, assessment, and some instructional designing.

• Instructional Designer - Greg Siering is a member of the University Teleplex. He will facilitate the video streaming, enhance the course web site, and create forms for submission of course projects.
  

Appendix

Dr. Susan Tancock is an associate professor at Ball State University, where she has been a Project Director in the Department of Elementary Education for the last nine years. She has taught the proposed course many times as an on-campus course and as a distance education course offered over television. Dr. Tancock is active in several literacy organizations such as The International Reading Association and the Indiana State Reading Association, where she has served as the editor of the Indiana Reading Journal for the past five years.

She uses technology as an integral part of all of her classes and has a commitment to increasing teachers' uses of technology in teaching. She has recently been awarded a Technology Fellowship in the Department of Elementary Education due to her interest in and expertise with technology and pedagogy. She will be providing faculty development in technology for her department this Spring Semester. Dr. Tancock is also very involved with other faculty members on campus who are using state-of-the-art software and equipment to improve teaching and learning in higher education. She is quite proficient in using the inQsit assessment program, e-mail, discussion groups, chat groups, bulletin boards, presentation software, web-based grade book, search engines, and web page software to enhance teaching and learning.

Dr. Tancock received funding from the Coca-Cola Foundation to pursue a technology project in a fourth-grade classroom in Muncie, Indiana. This project is currently underway. She has also made several presentations at professional meetings where she has discussed her uses of technology in teaching and learning.

Budget Narrative

The funding amount requested ($7000) will be used to provide release time during the Summer and Fall semesters of the year 2000. The released time will allow the Project Director to develop, field test, and revise the learning modules for the course.