Face-to-face workshops and courses

Professional development on-site workshops and courses are well-established ways to deliver training to education professionals.

This kind of face-to-face courses can vary in duration - workshops being generally shorter and with more hands-on practice. Both can be followed up by asynchronous online sessions. They can contribute to building up a sense of community within a school cluster by offering an occasion for teachers belonging to partner schools to get together and meet in person before launching a project.

Workshops can focus on specific project operational stages and be held at regular intervals, both at the beginning, at midterm or a the end of the project.

Online courses

Online courses can be delivered on virtual platforms and offer the advantage of being usually more clearly structured, rich in visuals and media content, less time-consuming and self-paced.

Teachers can attend such courses any time, from any place, without the need to travel or to get permission from their schools.

Learning snacks, Digital pills or eTapas

Learning snacks or digital pills are very short, online training units – usually no longer than 15-30 minutes and video-based - in which a single issue, study case or solution is presented.

This kind of training sessions have become popular with teachers, because the effort required is limited and the focus is on providing tips and ideas to try out in schools and classrooms.

Learning snacks were offered within the Living Schools Lab project in form of short Twitter discussions, practitioner-led webinars, or topic-specific webinars. For more ideas check out the LSL snackbar.

Similar initiatives have been run also in other countries, for example:

• eTapas by eEducation Austria
• Die digitale tapas bar (Germany)

Online live events

Live events can be hosted online within the framework of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for teachers as single webinars or cycles of webinars to provide insight on a specific topic of common interest. A live event is often integrated in online courses and MOOCs with the aim to offer participants an in-depth talk, often followed by a Q&A session.

Webinars require the use of a video conference platform, like for example: Adobe Connect, Cisco Webex, Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, etc. The number of admitted participants may vary according to the tool used. Sessions can be recorded and later shared with other participants.

Expert talks are webinars in which guest speakers and experts are invited to give a talk on a specific subject.

Panels can host a series of speakers who discuss over a specific topic. Panels can be held both in presence and online and are usually moderated by an interviewer who hosts the session and asks questions.

Teachmeets are informal conference-style meetings organised by teachers for teachers who work together for mutual support and professional development. Each speaker usually makes a 2–8-minute presentation to share ideas and to provide inspiration for good practice.

School-based study groups along MOOCs

Nowadays there is a plethora of professional development opportunities for teachers available online in the form of MOOCs. Why not considering some of these high-quality, ready-made courses as a starting point for whole-school mentoring approaches?

MOOCs are open, online courses that have become popular with teachers who often lack access to relevant professional development opportunities. European Schoolnet Academy and School Education Gateway Teacher Academy both offer a rich catalogue of courses that could support the setting up of school-based or cluster-based learning communities.

Study-group sessions could for example be organised to share the contents of a MOOC, or part of it, with the teachers of one or more Mentee schools, to develop the skills required and to facilitate the implementation of new ideas and practices gained in a MOOC.

Teachers and school leaders can meet regularly in these study groups - either on-site or online - to:

• Support and motivate one another throughout the MOOC
• Provide structure to their learning by offering a place and time to work on the MOOC
• Discuss the MOOC’s topics and ideas in the context of the schools’ realities
• Plan how to implement new ideas and practices after the MOOC.

The video below by SEG Teacher Academy provides an overview of how to organise school-based study groups alongside Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for teachers. The tips and procedures suggested are based on the outcomes of a school pilot run in 2019 by School Education Gateway in eight countries across Europe.

Could the model suggested support the common learning journey of Mentor and Mentee schools in our MenSI school pilot?

For more details and further guidance take a look at the following resources:

• Report
• Infosheets for schools
• Infosheets for policymakers
• MOOC

Online Mentoring

Mentoring online can offer multiple advantages helping Mentor schools to decouple the constraints of time and location and easily reach out to a greater number of teachers.

Besides being cost-effective, online mentoring provides a variety of opportunities also in terms of greater flexibility and round-the-clock accessibility. Mentors may record their own lessons, so that mentees observe them or the other way around. Live lectures can be recorded to provide teachers with strategies, methodologies, and tips for classroom practice. Mentors and teacher trainers can have live mentoring conversations through tools such as MS Teams, Google Meets, etc.

As with anything, there are however also downsides and things to watch out for if mentoring online is to be successful. Take a look at the video interview to María Jesús García San Martín, of the Spanish National Institute for Educational Technology and Teacher Professional Development, which is part of a European Schoolnet MOOC on Mentoring in Schools. After watching the video, please consider if and how mentoring online would make sense in the context of our MenSI project.

Video recordings of classroom practice

Using video recordings as a tool for sharing reviews of lessons is a powerful mechanism to enhance mentoring practice. Advanced practitioners in the Mentor school could for example video record snippets of their lessons to demonstrate innovative ways of using technology in the classroom and to facilitate teachers’ metacognitive reflection in the Mentee schools.

As Rachel Lofthouse, Head of Teacher Learning at the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University, writes in a blog post, the use of video supports “a feedback loop in practice development, and the opportunity for teachers to become more metacognitive in practice […]. Video recording provides teachers with access to their own practice in a way previously not possible, and this has the power to re-frame a teacher’s view of students, of learning and of themselves. If used to its potential it will provide insights, stimulate debate and support reviews of current practice.”

A great thing about recent technical developments is that they have made the process of video recording lessons a lot easier. Mobile devices allow us to easily record ourselves and video-sharing platforms make the process of sharing videos in preparation of a mentoring session very simple.

Nevertheless, it is important to think about when, how and for what purpose video is used. And also what limitations there are to recording a lesson in terms of privacy protection.

Let’s watch the video interview to Rachel Lofthouse below, in which she outlines both benefits and challenges of video recordings for mentoring. The video is part of a European Schoolnet Academy MOOC dedicated to mentoring teachers in schools.