Workshops & Certifications
CASE STUDY: Erma Anderson
Goal: Support teachers enrolled in an 12-week cohort with one platform to share resources, teaching practices and peer feedback asynchronously to foster deeper discussions and learning during in-person sessions.
ABSTRACT
Taking interaction beyond the Zoom session
LEADERS: Erma Anderson
PARTICIPANTS: 35 K-5 teachers
ORGANIZATION: AERO (American Education Reaches Out)
Goal:
Better virtual collaboration and shared practices
This case study explores the implementation of Huddle Up, an asynchronous online learning & collaboration platform with an online cohort of 35 Elementary School teachers pursuing an MSIS Certificate (Math Specialist in International Schools) through the American Office of Overseas Schools (AERO). Leader Erma Anderson sought more authentic collaboration from participants focused on sharing practices .
BACKGROUND
Challenge: How to learn from each other virtually?
The MSIS course has been supporting teacher development for over 20 years. Cohorts meet in person (or in Zoom, during the pandemic), typically for six sessions of 2-3 hours to complete one module over the course over two months. The entire course consists of completing 4 modules.
Traditionally, these cohorts were able to easily share practices during the live sessions, but struggled to collaborate and learn between sessions. This was especially true during the pandemic. The goal of the course is to improve math instruction to be more conceptual and less procedural.
"There are so many 'aha' moments.
That's what keeps me going."
“Teachers just weren’t sharing practices (virtually) like they were face to face.”
But each live session offered a limited amount of time for everyone to share the actual implementation of the course content (eg. lessons that were being presented to students.) Erma sought out Huddle Up to increase learning and collaboration between sessions as well as to provide an online environment for learners to share their actual practices with one another asynchronously in order to foster deeper conversations and dialogue during the synchronous sessions.
"We really didn't have good tools for collaboration."
Prior to this, Erma shared folders with resources and fostered communication through platforms like Slack, Padlet and Zoom break-out rooms. These provided environments to ask and answer questions and hear opinions, but were difficult to organize as the collaboration grew and seldom presented authentic opportunities for learners to share their actual work or easily provide feedback to one another about that work.
IMPLEMENTATION
Move learning beyond theory; sharing best practices.
The case study cohort consisted of 35 elementary school teachers from multiple schools, meeting six times over a 12-week period.
Erma started the experience by uploading her usual teaching PowerPoints and supplementary resources into Huddle Up. She also front-loaded some initial tasks for learners to share their opinions various method as well as sharing their own teaching practices.
Having that opportunity to share how you approached a problem allows everyone to think, 'Oh yeah, I can do that.' So I think that's powerful."
Erma was excited to try Huddle Up's more active learning model, "So, when people have implemented the strategies (in the classroom) and they can share them, others will learn from that. And that's where the real learning is going to take place. It isn't going to take place by just sitting there listening to me."
As can be seen, Erma is advocate for active learning.. "Kids (and teachers) don't learn math by me telling them. It's through the discussions and hands on."
Depending on the progress made during each live session - or the ancillary topics that came up during the live conversations - these tasks could be the easily and dynamically adapted to target issues that were relevant to the group.
"Encouraging teachers to share good practices. Things that worked. Things that didn't work."
RESULTS
Increased participation. Increased learning.
Erma’s teacher participation and interaction between her live sessions rates climbed to over 90%. Before Huddle Up these rates were inconistent and hovered around 10-20% and largely consisted of emails or quick feedback on the effectiveness of the live session (not the actual implementation of the content).
Transparent accountability --> 90%+ participation
Why 90% participation is such a success
"Huddle Up is a model for what you want to happen in the math class itself. You want that discourse. And when that doesn't happen, there's no learning."
Teacher-learners shared responded to various prompts developed by Erma to share opinions, ideas, and classroom practices - as well as share peer feedback via open comments or more structured Huddles (which can provide qualitative as well as quantitative peer feedback data to each user).
Did Huddle Up make an impact? "Oh yes. I can see the grrowth!"
the power of cohorts sharing their thinking
NEXT STEPS
Expanding the interactive learning model
(In Huddle Up) People are sharing their thinking, which is powerful. And that's what you want to model in the classroom. So, the same thing that is happening on Huddle Up (as teachers learn) is what you want to see in the classroom."
Erma is already preparing for an expanded use of Huddle Up. In addition to addition MSIS cohorts, she is developing an asynchronous extension to her one-day workshops on Instructional Coherence taught around the USA.
And, she is underway with developing a Huddle Up project to “Train the Trainer” for leaders and innovators within her professional network.
"It’s what you learn from each other.”
the need for platforms that connect us