What makes online professional development effective? The effect of quality characteristics on teachers’ satisfaction and changes in their professional practices

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearch

Authors

The number of online professional development (PD) activities for teachers has increased over the past decade. While there is evidence on characteristics of effective face-to-face PD, little is known about the quality of online PD activities. The present study investigates the quality of online PD activities as perceived by teachers, and the association of PD quality with teachers' satisfaction and their changes in practice. The study is based on survey data from N = 387 teachers who participated in a formal online PD activity. Our results indicate high levels of cognitive activation, as well as high clarity and structure of the online PD activity, and moderate levels of collaboration among participants in online PD. While all quality characteristics predict teachers' satisfaction, only cognitive activation and collaboration in online PD predict changes in teachers’ professional practices.
Original languageEnglish
Article number104805
JournalComputers & Education
Volume200
Number of pages12
ISSN0360-1315
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.07.2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The data were collected as part of the project E-LANE, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. 1 1 We randomly selected a sample of formal online PD activities that had been offered to teachers from April to October 2021 in two large federal states in Germany. All participants in the selected online PD activities received a written invitation to take part in the survey four to six weeks after the online PD took place. We selected this time period because we were interested in learning about the changes that teachers made in their classrooms after completing the online PD. This online survey was conducted using the platform Unipark by Tivian Xi GmbH. A total of N = 387 teachers responded to the invitation and participated in our study (Brandenburg: N = 280, Schleswig-Holstein: N = 107). The teachers in the sample (81% female) worked in primary schools (41%) and secondary schools (59%) with mean teaching experience of 14 years (SD = 11.55). At the time of the survey, teachers report to have participated in M = 11.75 online PD activities (SD = 13.12) since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Funding Information:
We have no conflicts of interest to disclose, This work is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research , Germany, through the Digitalisation in Education program, Award 01JD1825A-B . The views contained in this article are those of the authors, and not their institutions or the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors

    Research areas

  • Adult learning, Distance education and online learning, Lifelong learning, Media in education, Teacher professional development
  • Educational science

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Measuring institutional overlap in global governance
  2. The Shareholder Value Effect of System Overloads: An Analysis of Investor Responses to the 2003 Blackout in the US
  3. Human development and the "explosion" of democracy
  4. Development of tools to prevent food waste
  5. Methan - das unterschätzte Klimagas
  6. Paradoxe Kritik
  7. Publikationsbasierte Dissertation?!
  8. Evidence-based Entrepreneurship (EBE): A systematic approach to cumulative science
  9. Odors enhance visual attention to congruent objects
  10. Existenzgründungen junger Handwerksmeister
  11. VALUES-BASED BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION-THE CASE OF ECOSIA AND ITS BUSINESS MODEL
  12. System Properties Determine Food Security and Biodiversity Outcomes at Landscape Scale
  13. Die Liebe der Soziologie
  14. Human development as a general theory of social change
  15. Trace Analysis of the Antineoplastics Ifosfamide and Cyclophosphamide in Sewage Water by Two-Step Solid-Phase Extraction and Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry
  16. Framework for Smart Services as a premise for collaboration in the era of manufacturing services
  17. Activities in retirement
  18. Towards a more sustainable metal use – Lessons learned from national strategy documents
  19. Automated system for measuring the radial clearance of rolling bearings
  20. Kapazitätsbelegungsplanung
  21. Friede den Völkern
  22. Sunspot equilibria in a monetary real business cycle model
  23. Bolt load retention and creep response of AS41 alloyed with 0.15% Ca
  24. Dry high speed milling as a new machining technology of ceramics for biomedical and other applications
  25. Argentine clustering of soy biodiesel production
  26. Business Judgement Rule
  27. Patterns of entrepreneurial career development
  28. Site use of grazing cattle and sheep in a large-scale pasture landscape
  29. Deleuze, a Split with Foucault
  30. From the open road to the high seas?
  31. Revisiting the richness of integrated vehicle and crew scheduling
  32. The impact of mindfulness on well-being and performance in the workplace
  33. Großes E*erzählen
  34. A Geometric Approach to Decouple Robotino Motions and its Functional Controllability
  35. CSR Communication and the Polarization of Public Discourses
  36. ‘Art of Flight’
  37. Towards sustainable resource management
  38. Im Schatten des Vielfaltsdiskurses
  39. Recognition of a WCAM Settlement in Germany
  40. The effects of competition in local schooling markets on leadership for learning
  41. Against Metaphor – Against Interpretation
  42. Complex Times, Complex Time
  43. Carabids.org – a dynamic online database of ground beetle species traits (Coleoptera, Carabidae)
  44. A Survey of Surveys
  45. Performance Saga: Interview 04