COPE recently designed four online professional development courses for the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity. These math courses, which incorporate video, discussion boards, and online learning tools, will be taken for graduate credit by educators working in U.S. schools across the world.
Center for Online Professional Education
Professional Development
Supporting and improving teacher practice is a cornerstone of COPE's work. Through our work with teachers, school and district leaders, and state policy makers, we have recognized that the "one size fits all" model of professional development does not effectively address the unique needs of each district. As a result, COPE offers a wide range of customized online professional development programs for educators.
A number of COPE projects are using online technologies to help teachers and administrators grow professionally. Through the EdTech Leaders Online® (ETLO) program, educators from across the country can take online professional development courses, share ideas with colleagues, and learn to design and deliver online courses for teachers and students in their districts. Using a “train-the-trainer” model, ETLO enables school districts, state departments of education and other educational organizations to build their capacity to use online learning.
COPE will apply lessons learned from years of online experience to its newest professional development initiative: E-Learning for Educators. In this project, ETLO will work with public television stations and departments of education in nine states to build state-wide online learning programs, train local online specialists and develop a series of content-rich mathematics and English Language Arts online courses.
COPE has also used online professional development to help connect educators internationally. By designing a set of mathematics courses for high school teachers, COPE helped the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity conduct meaningful online professional development for its teachers at schools around the world.
Finally, COPE is one of several centers at EDC contributing to the work of the New England Comprehensive Center (NECC) and the New York Comprehensive Center (NYCC). The two Comprehensive Centers were recently awarded to RMC Research and its partners, Learning Innovations at WestEd and the Education Alliance at Brown, and are funded through grants from the U.S. Department of Education. The mission of both NECC and NYCC is to develop the capacity of state education agencies to assist districts and schools in improving achievement outcomes for all students.
By creating innovative online and face-to-face professional development programs for educators, we seek to achieve the following:
- Increase teacher knowledge;
- Improve instructional practice;
- Enable school leaders to lead systemic educational improvement efforts;
- Support teacher induction and retention;
- Enhance pre-service and in-service professional development programs; and
- Allow all schools, especially those in underserved communities, to put technology to effective use.
For more information about COPE's professional development projects, visit our projects page.
