This award supports a planning visit to enable Professor Edward Robeck at Salisbury University in Maryland to meet with Professor Lilia Halim at the National University of Malaysia. The visit will help develop a detailed international collaborative research and education plan to determine cultural effects in the ways teachers interact with online courses designed to enhance science teachers' content knowledge and instructional abilities. The planned project will also include participation of the American Geological Institute (AGI) and the Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The visit will include preparation for logistical planning, visits to schools and on-site assessment of the technical compatibility of courses within the available infrastructure. As increased Internet access provides ways to overcome geographic, temporal and other barriers to educational opportunities, attention is turning to optimizing online course interactions. Research is beginning to provide insights into how online interactions are shaped by personal expectations and patterns of interpersonal communication, which can in turn be recognized as related to the learner's culture. The proposed project will extend that research to focus specifically on online science teacher professional interactions in graduate classrooms.
There is sufficient overlap of interests between faculty at Salisbury University and the University of Malaysia to indicate that they can successfully pursue the activities proposed, and that the interaction will benefit both sides. The research will have broad impact as distance learning becomes an increasingly prevalent form of teacher professional development. The education graduate students participating in both the visit and the planned research will be the ones who will provide professional development to teachers in the future, which makes their knowledge of culturally sensitive approaches to professional development of vital importance. In addition, U.S. teachers who take online graduate courses that are designed with explicit attention to cultural diversity will be more likely to extend that perspective to their students. Results of the research will be shared throughout the network of agencies doing similar online course development through professional meetings, conferences, publications and in prototype online course applications.
