Author:

Keywords:

online professional development, educational technologist, ICT coordinator, curriculum design

Abstract:

In this session we want to compare and contrast the educational design of two different online programmes for the professional development of educational technologists in Flemish compulsory education. The programmes are offered by the same institution, are intended for the same audience, have a similar study load, yet they use completely different approaches to online learning. During the session we want to discuss the lessons learned from the past two years of running these two programmes. As of September 2021, the Flemish Department of Education (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) subsidises schools at all levels of compulsory education to hire and appoint educational technologists. Those EdTech staff do not need to have a teaching certificate, but are expected to have some form of relevant expertise, such as a background in ICT or computer science. The Department of Education has defined two sets of qualifications for Educational technologists, but has not (yet) enforced those qualifications as a condition for hiring or appointing educational technologists. The first set of qualifications is related to the the so-called pedagogical ICT-coordinator, the second set relates to the so-called technical ICT-coordinator (Desmedt, E., Sempels, Y., & Pauwels, M., 2022). Since two years, quite a few colleges (Universities of applied science) have offered part-time professional development programmes for EdTech staff in different formats, usually with the status of a post-graduate certificate at bachelor’s level with a study load of in between 20 and 30 ECTS. Most colleges offer a programme for both sets of qualifications, i.e. pedagogical and technical ICT-coordination. As far as delivery mode: some programmes are purely campus-based, most offer a hybrid delivery, and one college offers the programmes as purely online curricula. Since 2021, the University Colleges Leuven-Limburg (UCLL) have offered two fully online programmes – Educational technologist (ET) and ICT-coordinator (IC) – that together have attracted an average of 40 participants per year (https://www.ucll.be/nl/microcredential/ict). The programmes have two common modules, but most modules are specific to each programme. In the development of the two programmes, two quite different approaches were used. The IC programme started from existing face-to-face modules within the teacher training programme that were adapted to an online audience, whereas the ET programme started from scratch in order to design a programme tailored to educational professionals. The different starting points explain some of the differences between the two programmes, but other factors are involved as well. Desmedt, E., Sempels, Y., & Pauwels, M., 2022. Towards team-oriented ICT coordination at school. Kenniscentrum Digisprong, Department onderwijs van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap - https://assets.vlaanderen.be/image/upload/v1667919372/TSI_-_Integrated_Report_3_-_English_Version_xy1n4y.pdf