What Is Distance Education? Is Distance Education for Me? Identifying Courses Current Course Schedules Student Services Graduate Announcements Undergraduate Announcements
The State of South Carolina Ensuring Best Practices in the Delivery of Professional Development Courses
While it is important to recognize that courses offered specifically for purposes of professional development must represent learning experiences of high quality, it is also important to recognize that such courses serve a different though not lesser purpose than courses traditionally offered for purposes of fulfilling graduate degree requirements. Courses offered traditionally to satisfy graduate degree requirements do, in fact, assist individuals in their development as professionals. However, their purpose generally is three-fold:1) to fulfill graduate degree requirements; 2) to address subject matter and/or skill development of a broader scope in terms of the knowledge base represented; and 3) to foster long term career development of the professional educator.Professional development courses may or may not fulfill degree requirements of a graduate program, and they do focus on specific knowledge or skill development needed by the teaching professional. Both degree and professional development types of courses are important to professional educators, and their relevance and usefulness is best determined by the individual purposes that each is designed to accomplish. Institutions offering coursework for graduate credit specifically for purposes of teacher or administrator professional development should consider the following questions for each course offered:
- In what ways is the professional development course aligned with the school district’s mission and/or strategic plan?
- How does the professional development course answer the important question of time factor involved in terms of participants’ developing an understanding of new concepts and/or acquiring new skills, having opportunities to apply these concepts and skills, and assessing the effectiveness of these applications?
- In what way does the professional development course delivery represent a collaboration of learners within the course itself for the course participants?
- In what way does the professional development course represent a collaboration between the institution offering the course and the school district receiving the course?
- What follow-up feature has been developed as a part of the professional development course to ensure that the learning that took place within the framework of the course will have a long term impact on both the course participants but also the school districts where the participants are employed?
- How do professional development course requirements or expectations for participants ensure that there is appropriate rigor for and intellectual demand of the course participants?
- How is the professional development course evaluated in terms of meeting its specific intent regarding the content to be studied and/or skill(s) to be developed? How is it evaluated in terms of meeting the needs of the requesting institution?
- In what way or ways is the individual teaching the professional development course especially qualified for the teaching assignment?
- What is the relationship between the professional development course instructor and the institution offering the course in terms of the instructor’s knowledge of the institution and its mission and the philosophy and/or conceptual framework of the institution’s department, school or college of education?
- How does offering the professional development course relate to the mission of the institution and the institution’s department, school or college of education? How are course evaluations used to strengthen the course and ensure that offering the course is helping to fulfill the mission of the institution and that of its department, school or college of education?
- What changes in knowledge, skills and dispositions should be expected as a result of the professional development course? How will these changes be documented? What are the expected participant outcomes?