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From the Schoolhouse to Their House: A New Playbook for Teaching and Learning

Park University

As education continued to evolve during the COVID-19 crisis, Park University developed a four-week online workshop, “From the Schoolhouse to Their House: A New Playbook for Teaching and Learning”, to assist teachers in the transition from a traditional classroom to eLearning.  The workshop was designed to support teachers and administrators on an asynchronous platform with synchronous collaboration and learning opportunities each week.  Additionally, the digital learning workshop helped teachers develop and plan using effective practices for future online teaching and learning. 

Taking the experience of Park University School of Education Faculty and the Digital Learning Team, Park University was able to couple knowledge with the expertise of K-12 educators who are on the frontline in this new world of Internet learning. Specifically, the workshop included modules to assist K – 12 educators in navigating numerous bits of information and practice coming their way to ensure effective teaching for challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis and for the future. The workshop served as a clearinghouse and resource for participants over four weeks and beyond. The workshop showed that Park University was committed to supporting this transition while learning how to best serve K – 12 educators through the process of collaboration and conversation.

The units for this workshop were:

UnitsWeekly Discussion Topic Breakouts
Unit 1: Taking What I Already Have & Making it WorkMake Over Mondays
Unit 2: Meeting the Social-Emotional Needs of eLearnersTrauma Informed Tuesdays
Unit 3: Shifting to Interdisciplinary PlanningWeave It Wednesdays
Unit 4: Striking a Virtual – Actual BalanceThriving Thursdays

Units included communication tips, resources & tools for learning, daily expert panels via Zoom and show & tell discussions.

  • Units were asynchronous with a show & tell discussion and could be viewed/worked through in any order. The exception to this was the expert panels that occurred daily during the four weeks. 
  • The workshop was designed for flexibility.
  • Expert panels met each evening at 7:00 p.m. (CDT) Monday- Thursday– links were sent weekly.
  • Participants also had the opportunity for breakout conversations during each of the evening discussions.
  • The cost of the workshop was $50.00 per participant.

Park University was excited to host and deliver this innovative way to support effective teaching and learning during this unprecedented time in our history. Below are some comments we received from participants: 

Text Box: ”I enjoyed the workshop and listening to everyone's ideas and thoughts. I am fortunate that our district has provided ample tech training and felt well prepared for our remote learning. As a result, some of the meetings felt a bit tedious because they covered programs that we have been using for several years and have had an abundance of training using them.” “I really enjoyed most of the Zoom conversations and learned a lot every night, even if I was not the target audience. SO MANY RESOURCES were shared! I have a million sticky notes right now! And I learned I am not on an island.” “I really think you did a thorough job on giving us multiple ways to deliver educational opportunities to our students.” “I thought it was a great way to pull in different opinions and structures for educators to work through together.” “Great topics, resources and expert panels each week.”

Based on the feedback above, we believe it was a very successful workshop and are looking forward to sharing this workshop again during the Fall 2020 semester. 

For any of you that are interested, I encourage you to take a moment to watch this 65-second video that captured the essence of the workshop:

Watch Video

“The most effective, successful professionals are constantly learning, they take the time to apply what they have learned, and they continually work to improve themselves.”

Joel Gardner
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