research-article

Public Access

A Comparative Analysis of Online and Face-to-Face Professional Development Models for CS Education

Authors:

Hilarie Nickerson,

Jeffrey B. BushAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Pages 621 - 626

https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017784

Published: 08 March 2017 Publication History

Abstract

This paper compares student outcomes from 75 K-12 teachers who participated in either online, blended, or face-to-face professional development design to support teacher implementation of a programming curriculum during the regular school day. The results are based on survey responses collected over two years from 4,832 students. With only one exception, the results showed no negative student outcomes when comparing student survey results from teachers who participated in online professional development compared to students of teachers who participated in face-to-face professional development. Students who had teachers who participated in face-to-face professional development, however, expressed stronger interest in designing their own games at home. These results suggest that online professional development that is designed to support K-12 teacher classroom implementation of CS education curricula is a viable model with respect to student outcomes. Recommendations for the design of online curricula for CS education are discussed.

References

[1]

Bates, M.S., Phalen, L., and Moran, C. 2016. Online professional development: A primer. Phi Delta Kappan 97, 5 (Feb. 2016), 70--73.

[2]

Berger, H., Eylon, B.-S., and Bagno, E. 2008. Professional development of physics teachers in an evidence-based blended learning program. Journal of Science Education and Technology 17, 4 (May 2008), 399--409.

[3]

Cordingley, P. and Bell, M. 2012. Understanding What Enables High Quality Professional Learning: A Report on the Research Evidence. Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE) and Pearson School Improvement.

[4]

Dede, C., Ketelhut, D.J., Whitehouse, P., Breit, L., and McCloskey, E.M. 2009. A research agenda for online teacher professional development. Journal of Teacher Education 60, 1 (Jan. 2009), 8--19.

[5]

Elliott, S. 2016. What were the first distance learning courses? HowStuffWorks. http://people.howstuffworks.com/what-were-first-distance-learning-courses.htm

[6]

Ericson, B.J., Guzdial, M., and McKlin, T. 2014. Preparing secondary computer science teachers through an iterative development process. In Proceedings of the 9th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education. WiPSCE '14. ACM, New York, NY, 116--119.

Digital Library

[7]

Fishman, B., Konstantopoulos, S., Kubitskey, B.W., Vath, R., Park, G., Johnson, H., and Edelson, D.C. 2013. Comparing the impact of online and face-to-face professional development in the context of curriculum implementation. Journal of Teacher Education 64, 5 (Nov. 2013), 426--438.

[8]

Garet, M.S., Porter, A.C., Desimone, L., Birman, B.F., and Yoon, K.S. 2001. What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal 38, 4 (Winter 2001), 915--945.

[9]

Goode, J., Margolis, J., and Chapman, G. 2014. Curriculum is not enough: The educational theory and research foundation of the Exploring Computer Science professional development model. In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. SIGCSE '14. ACM, New York, NY, 493--498.

Digital Library

[10]

Gray, J., Corley, J., and Eddy, B.P. 2016. An experience report assessing a professional development MOOC for CS Principles. In Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education. SIGCSE '16. ACM, New York, NY, 455--460.

Digital Library

[11]

Owston, R., Wideman, H., Murphy, J., and Lupshenyuk, D. 2008. Blended teacher professional development: A synthesis of three program evaluations. The Internet and Higher Education 11, 3--4 (Jan. 2008), 201--210.

[12]

Park, G., Johnson, H., Vath, R., Kubitskey, B., and Fishman, B. 2013. Examining the roles of the facilitator in online and face-to-face PD contexts. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 21, 2 (Apr. 2013), 225--245.

[13]

Patton, K., Parker, M., and Neutzling, M.M. 2012. Tennis shoes required: The role of the facilitator in professional development. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 83, 4 (Dec. 2012), 522--532.

[14]

Price, T.W., Cateté, V., Albert, J., Barnes, T., and Garcia, D.D. 2016. Lessons learned from "BJC" CS Principles professional development. In Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education. SIGCSE '16. ACM, New York, NY, 467--472.

Digital Library

[15]

Sentance, S., Humphreys, S., and Dorling, M. 2014. The Network of Teaching Excellence in computer science and master teachers. In Proceedings of the 9th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education. WiPSCE '14. ACM, New York, NY, 80--88.

Digital Library

[16]

Webb, D.C., Repenning, A., and Koh, K.H. 2012. Toward an emergent theory of broadening participation in computer science education. In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. SIGCSE '12. ACM, New York, NY, 173--178.

Digital Library

[17]

Webb, D.C. and Miller, S.B. 2015. Gender analysis of a large scale survey of middle grades students' conceptions of computer science education. In Proceedings of the Third Conference on GenderIT. GenderIT '15. ACM, New York, NY, 1--8.

Digital Library

[18]

Wilson, S.M. 2013. Professional development for science teachers. Science 340, 6130 (Apr. 2013), 310--313.

Cited By

Tsan JCoenraad MCrenshaw ZPalmer JEatinger DBeck KWeintrop DFranklin DMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)Reimagining Professional Development for K-8 CS TeachersProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499361(530-536)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478431.3499361
Yoon S(2022)Designing Complex Systems Curricula for High School Biology: A Decade of Work with the BioGraph ProjectFostering Understanding of Complex Systems in Biology Education10.1007/978-3-030-98144-0_11(227-247)Online publication date: 26-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98144-0_11
Marei AYoon SYoo JRichman TNoushad NMiller KShim J(2021)Designing Feedback Systems: Examining a Feedback Approach to Facilitation in an Online Asynchronous Professional Development Course for High School Science TeachersSystems10.3390/systems90100109:1(10)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/systems9010010
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A Comparative Analysis of Online and Face-to-Face Professional Development Models for CS Education
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
    1. Distance learning
    2. E-learning
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
  2. User characteristics
    1. Age
      1. Adolescents

Recommendations

Lessons Learned from "BJC" CS Principles Professional Development
SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education

Computer Science Principles (CSP) will become an Advanced Placement course during the 2016-17 school year, and there is an immediate need to train new teachers to be leaders in computing classrooms. From 2012-2015, the Beauty and Joy of Computing team ...
A Comparison of Online and Hybrid Professional Development for CS Principles Teachers
ITiCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

The College of St. Scholastica, in partnership with Trinity College, adapted the Mobile Computer Science Principles (CSP) curriculum and professional development (PD) for delivery online to reach high school teachers unable to attend traditional face-to-...
CS principles professional development: only 9,500 to go!
SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Our grand challenge is to scale high-quality computer science curriculum and instruction to reach all high school students. CS10K -- an NSF and ACM-sponsored project -- is working to do just that by supporting curriculum development, computer education ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 2017

838 pages

ISBN:9781450346986

DOI:10.1145/3017680

General Chairs:
Michael E. Caspersen
Aarhus University
,
Stephen H. Edwards
Virginia Tech
,
Program Chairs:
Tiffany Barnes
North Carolina State University
,
Daniel D. Garcia
University of California, Berkeley

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 08 March 2017

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

National Science Foundation

Conference

SIGCSE '17

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

SIGCSE '17: The 48th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 8 - 11, 2017

Washington, Seattle, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 105 of 348 submissions, 30%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,787 of 5,146 submissions, 35%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
689
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)96
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)15

Reflects downloads up to 25 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Tsan JCoenraad MCrenshaw ZPalmer JEatinger DBeck KWeintrop DFranklin DMerkle LDoyle MSheard JSoh LDorn B(2022)Reimagining Professional Development for K-8 CS TeachersProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 110.1145/3478431.3499361(530-536)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3478431.3499361
Yoon S(2022)Designing Complex Systems Curricula for High School Biology: A Decade of Work with the BioGraph ProjectFostering Understanding of Complex Systems in Biology Education10.1007/978-3-030-98144-0_11(227-247)Online publication date: 26-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98144-0_11
Marei AYoon SYoo JRichman TNoushad NMiller KShim J(2021)Designing Feedback Systems: Examining a Feedback Approach to Facilitation in an Online Asynchronous Professional Development Course for High School Science TeachersSystems10.3390/systems90100109:1(10)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/systems9010010
Perry TFindon MCordingley P(2021)Remote and Blended Teacher Education: A Rapid ReviewEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1108045311:8(453)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11080453
Parker BAnderson MBatterham PGayed ASubotic-Kerry MAchilles MChakouch CWerner-Seidler AWhitton AO’Dea B(2021)Building Educators’ Skills in Adolescent Mental Health (BEAM): A pilot study examining the preliminary effectiveness and acceptability of a web-based training program for Australian secondary school teachers. (Preprint)JMIR Mental Health10.2196/29989Online publication date: 29-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.2196/29989
Ni LBausch GBenjamin R(2021)Computer science teacher professional development and professional learning communities: a review of the research literatureComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2021.199366633:1(29-60)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2021.1993666
Le VMaor DMcConney A(2021)The potential of social networking sites for continuing professional learning: investigating the experiences of teachers with limited resourcesStudies in Continuing Education10.1080/0158037X.2021.193245344:3(546-562)Online publication date: 30-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2021.1932453
Yoon SMiller KRichman TWendel DSchoenfeld IAnderson EShim J(2020)Encouraging collaboration and building Community in Online Asynchronous Professional Development: designing for social capitalInternational Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning10.1007/s11412-020-09326-2Online publication date: 18-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-020-09326-2

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten