Online vs Face-To-Face Engagement of Computing Teachers for their Professional Development Needs

Abstract

Abstract. After a period of intense activity in preparation for the transition, Computing has been implemented in the curriculum in England for all children from ages 5-16. In this paper we investigate the aspects of professional development that Computing teachers are utilising. We conducted a survey of over 900 Computing teachers in England and use the results to reflect on the benefits of face-to-face vs online communities to support teachers. Our results show that teachers find the face-to-face events and training to be useful, and that teachers in our community are participating in many hours of professional development in order to address their needs in content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in Computing. Furthermore an online community is valuable in supporting teachers who require resources, access to expertise and guidance on curriculum issues in addition to face-to-face training, networking and support.

Diagnosis of the attitudes towards ICT of education students according to gender and educational modality

“…Although most of the current university students can be considered as "net generation" or "digital natives" (Thompson, 2013;Bowe & Wohn, 2015), it does not guarantee they have acquired the DC and, if they have acquired it, it is interesting to analyze the level of competence they have. Some authors (Sentance & Humphreys, 2015;Jaggars, 2014;Garcia, Escofet & Gros, 2013;Al-Doub, Goodwin & Al-Hunaiyyan, 2008) have found differences in DC when comparing different study modalities (face-to-face, distance or blended).…”

Activation of Computer Science Teachers in Slovenia

“…They also had an impression of lacking the teaching resources. As reported in [3,4,5,6,7,8,9], a possible answer to such concerns is a Community of practice (CoP). In this paper we report on intervention in which we established CoP among the Slovenian CS teachers to increase their teaching confidence and consequently improve student's knowledge of programming.…”

A Comprehensive Professional Development Program for K-8 Teachers to Teach Computer Science

“…and these are considered best practices of teaching these concepts. These demonstrations combined with the CS training are regarded as the most important pieces of K-12 CS PD (Sentance and Humphreys, 2015).…”