Perceptions and Usages of Online Teaching Resources by South Dakota Science and Agriculture Teachers

Abstract

Understanding how teachers utilize, adapt, and integrate curriculum is helpful in the development and dissemination of curricular resources to better serve our teachers’ needs. Agricultural and science educators face similar challenges in selecting, adapting, and delivering curricular content in their courses. The data presented here assesses teachers’ perceptions of online curricular resources and their usage by agriculture and science teachers in K-12 classrooms. The specific research objectives were to 1) determine the teacher’s perceptions and usage of online curriculum resources and 2) determine their methods to locate and select web-based curricular resources. Analysis suggests that the curricular needs and utilization may not be discipline-specific, and that needs identified in other disciplines may have applications in agriculture and science classrooms. Teachers utilized Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms to share and locate resources but expressed the need to have better organization and classification of online resources. Resources need to be tagged with state and national standards, have references, and activities that are engaging for students and easily adaptable to teachers’ local needs and styles. Teaching pre-service teachers to better utilize existing curricular resources could lead to improved instruction and student learning while saving time. Further research into the utilization of existing curriculum by both current and pre-service teachers is warranted.