TPT - Education | About Online Professional Development

AN ONLINE VS. FACE-TO-FACE STUDY

Does online professional development really work?

Can it change teacher practice?

Will student achievement improve as a result?

With funding from the US Department of Education's Ready to Teach program, tpt sought answers to these questions through a three-year study launched in partnership with the Rational Numbers Project (RNP) and the University of Minnesota.

Using the contents from RNP's proven workshop to train middle-grade teachers in methods that improve students' fraction learning, tpt put online professional development to the test against its face-to-face counterpart. Now concluded, the study demonstrated that online training can match face-to-face in effectively changing teacher practice and supporting student achievement gains. Our results should be welcome news to educators and administrators who want to improve the quality of teaching, but whose resources to do so are stretched increasingly thin.

Learn More about the Teaching Fractions Project (Flash presentation)

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The contents of this web page and many of the attached resources were developed under a grant from the United States Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. 50% ($1,050,340) of the total costs of the program were financed with Federal money and 50% ($1,040,000) came from other sources.