Current research shows that a teacher's skill in face-to-face teaching does not necessarily transfer to an online environment, and there is no one best way to prepare online instructors for their many managerial, technical, social and pedagogical roles. Researchers have examined the qualities of effective online instruction and shared various instruments for evaluating the effectiveness of online instructors, however very little primary research exists to document effective practices for supporting online instructors or assessing their performance in a virtual environment. With some understanding of the outcomes that effective professional development for online instructors should achieve, a careful examination of the ways that professional development can best achieve these outcomes is needed. Ideal for current online instructors and professionals who are responsible for overseeing instruction, this session presents PBS TeacherLine's model for supporting and assessing online instruction and the corresponding yearlong research study that documents the model's impact on both online course instructors and adult online learners during four course terms. Three key components will be shared: a description of professional development elements that, together, are effective for supporting online instructors; measures used to assess online instructors' performance and procedures for using the measures; and research findings that quantify the effectiveness of using this combination of professional development and assessment for achieving various impacts on online instructors and course learners. Session participants will actively critique the professional development model and assessments to determine their transferability to other virtual learning environments. Professional development for online instructors Efforts to describe the implementation and impact of professional development designed for teachers in face-to-face settings have revealed a set of best practices, but few resources exist to describe professional development for online instruction. Best practices for professional development of any kind suggest that peer support and ongoing, embedded professional guidance for instructors provide ideal mechanisms for meeting adult learners' individualized needs. Consistent with current research on professional development for online instructors, PBS TeacherLine utilizes a differentiated, multi-tiered model that balances the need to provide a structured learning experience conveying the core values of PBS TeacherLine courses with opportunities for facilitators to call upon their own experiences that meet their unique, informal and real-time learning needs. PBS TeacherLine's peer mentoring program and professional learning community forum for facilitators, in particular, mirror research-based best practices. Professional development also takes place through less structured opportunities such as quarterly faculty meetings, course reviews and print resources. This study of PBS TeacherLine's professional development for online course instructors found that PBS TeacherLine's facilitators rate the preparation they have received from TeacherLine favorably on a number of dimensions. Evaluating online instructors With the increasing popularity and growth of online learning, it is essential to establish clear, direct, relevant guidelines for evaluating online faculty that maintain instructional quality and promote best practices in online education. A faculty evaluation system can also signal an institutional commitment to online instructors' ongoing professional development. In situations where online course content and delivery systems are established by someone other than the course instructor, the evaluation of instructors can include the instructors' ability to provide enriching and extension activities for deepening learning beyond what the course developer originally intended. PBS TeacherLine's course instructors typically deliver courses that are developed by others. As a participant in the research study, each instructor assessed his/her own performance during each of four course terms. PBS TeacherLine's Associate Director of Online Facilitation and course learners used the same dimensions to assess instructor performance during the fall 2009, winter 2010, spring 2010 and summer 2010 course terms. After the completion of each term, instructors received personalized course reviews that aligned data from three sources - self, PBS and learners - to show areas of strength and needed improvement on all assessed dimensions. A questionnaire was used to prompt instructors' careful thought and reflection on the meaning and application of this data for their professional practice, and to facilitate goal setting. On the whole, learners rated their instructors' performance highly and attributed various outcomes with the high-quality online instruction they reported receiving through PBS TeacherLine.
