Evaluating the Impact of a Canvas Training Module on Teacher Knowledge of Instructional Practices

The challenges facing modern public schools are daunting; prime among those, that of updating instructor expertise to match evolving school demographics. The increasing need for professional development is often stymied by difficulties involved in scheduling face-to-face training sessions. To that end, the purpose of this action research project was to design an effective online learning alternative for professional development courses. Based upon Constructivist principles, the course at the heart of this project was designed to facilitate learning by engaging participants in hands-on tasks that developed from initial understanding to eventual mastery of the content area. The CASA model of online-learning (Menchaca 2014) was employed as the organizational basis of the individual course modules; content delivery followed by asynchronous responses, synchronous face-to-face sessions, and completed with an assessment. The prototype utilizes the Canvas Learning Management System as the delivery method for materials, with individual components of each module supplied by Canvas-based quizzes and web-pages, Google Apps surveys and documents, and Prezi presentations. In designing this course, several considerations arose, the first being the need for more concise presentations, as older presentations, designed to be supplemented with face-to-face dialogue, were less effective online. A second consideration was the need to adapt materials into a cohesive format; prior materials having been developed over time with considerable diversity in their construction. In the process of designing this course, much was learned about both the nature of online learning and teaching and the best ways to promote such learning. Well designed interfaces, understandable participant learning materials, concise and telling online assessments, and appropriate and usable interactivity tools are key to providing a successful online course.