The EDC Center for Online Professional Education (COPE) has been designing and implementing online discussions and workshops for K-12 teachers, administrators, and other educators since 1997. During this time, we have used online discussions to complement and extend in-person institutes and graduate courses, and provided online workshops on a variety of topics, involving hundreds of educators over the course of three years. Our audiences have included teachers at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels; individuals with decision-making responsibilities for curriculum, professional development, policy, budgeting, evaluation, technology implementation, and/or technology infrastructure at the school, district, and state levels; and individuals who are learning to conduct their own online professional development workshops. In all cases, our online workshops were designed with the following goals:

• To help teachers learn to use technology to enhance teaching and learning in their classrooms, and to help administrators provide the technology, materials, professional development, and support that will enable teachers to use technology effectively.
• To create an online community of learners in which participants share information and learn from each other. Educators, whether teachers or administrators, value opportunities to interact with knowledgeable peers who face the same issues and can provide both new ideas and feedback about one’s own ideas and practices.
• To closely link each workshop's activities with its participants' ongoing professional practice. For example, workshops for teachers include activities in which participants develop technology-enhanced lesson plans for their own use and to share with others in the workshop. Workshops for administrators include activities that scaffold decision-making and action-planning processes.
• To address specific practical needs articulated by the audience for a workshop topic, while building upon relevant theory and research.
• To provide information and resources that will be of continued value to participants in their professional practices.

Our approach is highly interactive, activity based, and discussion-rich, and therefore models the type of classroom practices we encourage educators to use when integrating technology. Workshop components, such as readings, activities, and discussions, are designed to accomplish the following:

• Engage participants’ inquiry into a topic
• Provoke new ideas
• Facilitate exploration and discovery
• Support experimentation with new tools and strategies
• Guide organization of ideas and integration into practice
• Promote sharing, constructive feedback, and reflection.

In the set of online workshops discussed in this report, information was presented to participants via HTML pages that combined text, graphics, and links. In some workshops, brief audio and video presentations were also used. The primary form of interaction was asynchronous threaded discussion, which allows participants to read and post messages at their convenience. When posting a message, a participant can either start a new "thread" (topic) or continue an existing thread by responding to messages within it. The software displays the messages in outline form to show which ones are in response to others.

We have analyzed and evaluated our online discussions and workshops; reviewed much of the available technology and the relevant research literature; explored a number of different approaches; conducted initial, midpoint, and ending surveys of participants; conducted in-person focus groups with district teams that we have trained (via online workshops) to serve as online professional development specialists in their districts; and engaged in extensive discussions to define principles of effective online workshop design and facilitation.

This report summarizes what we have done and learned to date. It is intended to provide useful information for those who are planning to incorporate online learning into professional development programs, and those who will design and implement online professional development activities. We are continuing to explore this new medium for teaching and learning, as are many others, and both the knowledge of the field and the available technologies will continue to advance rapidly. Therefore, this should be read as a status report of ongoing investigations by one of a number of groups exploring this field, rather than as a final statement on any aspect of online professional development.

This report contains the following major sections:

The Basis of this Report summarizes the goals and audiences of the online workshops and other online activities that inform this report.

General Considerations summarizes principles of effective professional development that we considered in our work, different approaches to online professional development (OPD), the key elements and potential advantages of our "learning community" approach to OPD, and some points to consider when planning the role of online workshops as part of a complete program that includes other types of professional development activities.

The Structure of an EDC-COPE Online Workshop presents an overview of the elements common to all our workshops, and notes about some additional elements used in specific workshops. Example screenshots are included, to convey the general "look and feel" of an OPD workshop.

Research Findings presents a summary of the data collected on four key areas of interest across a set of six workshops.

Strategies for Effective Online Professional Development provides strategies and guidelines, derived from our experience, for effectively designing, facilitating, implementing, and assessing online professional development workshops.

Online Learning Software Environments discusses features needed in systems used to develop and deliver online workshops using a learning community approach.

The Conclusion sums up our perspective of the current and future roles of online professional development for educators.

The Bibliography provides a selected set of recommended references, with brief annotations.

The Appendices provide specific information about EDC-COPE workshops; example activities and discussions; survey and evaluation forms; evaluation results; articles by EDC staff; handouts and slides from presentations by EDC staff; and notes from our reviews of many relevant software tools.