Prepare 21st century educators to support teaching learning in online, blended and traditional learning environments everywhere.
Our Organizational Objectives:
(1) Improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by providing world class professional development for America’s teachers and educational leaders, (2) Create online communities supporting ongoing professional development for educators everywhere, (3) Further our understanding of online teaching through research and evaluation studies tied to the courses and community.
Our Courses:
OTA offers a suite of courses, each of which is 4-6 weeks in length (depending upon the specific requirements of each customer):
The Online Teaching Course (OTC) – an introduction to online teaching for teachers that covers: nature of online learning, online teaching methods, online assessment, managing online classes, and the social/ethical aspects of online teaching. Participants develop an online lesson plan as part of the course.
The Management of Online Instruction course (MOI)- an introduction to the management of online learning courses intended primarily for school/college administrators. It covers: benefits/limitations of online learning, selecting and training online teachers, budgeting for online courses, evaluation methods for online learning, and the ethical/legal implications of online learning. Participants develop a plan of online learning as part of the course.
The Learning 2.0 Course – The OTA Learning 2.0 course (L20) is intended for individuals who want to understand first-hand how to harness the new applications of Web 2.0 for learning in formal or informal educational contexts. These applications include: blogs, wikis, podcasting, RSS feeds, social networking, media sharing, multiplayer games, and immersive environments. Our L20 course will be of particular interest to librarians, school technology coordinators, and those designing/teaching online courses.
Custom courses – configured to meet the needs of a specific institution and their teachers. For example, while online teaching for special needs is a topic covered in other courses, we could provide a full course about this topic if requested (e.g., for 504 coordinators). Alternatively, we could offer an entire course about online teaching for a given curriculum area (e.g., science, math, languages, etc).
