Towards a Theoretical Framework for the Design of Interactive Online Distance Learning Systems
Concluding Throughts
In the final PT3 report to the U.S. Department of Education we posited that the impact of TMFP could be favorably judged given the number of teacher educators who were prepared, and who used their on-line electronic resources during the project; as well as the extensive number of electronic learning objects and instructional resources developed by the Technology Fellow-Teacher Educator dyads. Further, we touted the probable success of the TMFP model with professional development being delivered by an undergraduate student, if the technology development activities were tailored to the faculty member's individual needs and project assignments and arranged to fit her time schedule. We closed the final report with the optimistic generalization, that the key to a successful TMFP type professional development experience is to establish a dyad (faculty member and technology fellow) that opens communication channels quickly with the dyad members establishing regular meeting times to collaborate and share ideas, techniques and project products.
Now, three years post PT3, it seems the most enduring aspect of TMFP were commitments to change among participating faculty who have continued to develop online instructional resources and have placed entire programs online. Second, program elements , such as, i-Folio and eZone, that were developed to resolve particular challenges we were experiencing during the grant, have been adopted widely across the college to support new applications in preparing tomorrow's teachers. These electronic “inventions” have provided a PT3 legacy for us, but the original intent of the project to prepare teacher educators to integrate technology has been the most important TMFP benchmark that we have strived to attain.