Although middle school faculty members are increasingly encouraged and expected to incorporate collaborative group projects into all aspects of their teaching, no specific professional development has been provided on this topic. While it may be assumed that teachers are comfortable with this pedagogy, a survey we offered to faculty indicates that they are hungry for more specific strategies and tools to use in order to facilitate the incorporation of collaboration in their classrooms.
Our objective is to provide relevant tools and information to the middle school faculty by means of a readily accessible wiki. In order to assess the effectiveness of our project, namely the tools we provide and the medium and method by which we make them accessible, we will review faculty comments on the wiki and a offer a follow-up survey in the 2011-2012 academic year.
We will implement our project during faculty professional development in August 2011. We will introduce the project wiki to faculty during a thirty-minute PD session and will encourage them to try some/all of the tools and to offer feedback.
Feedback from the faculty has surpassed expectation already at this juncture. Our initial survey recorded nealry 100% faculty participation; comments added to the survey indicated genuine enthusiasm about the project. We will introduce the finished project and corrosponding wiki formally to the faculty during teacher professional development in August 2011 (aforementioned). Our team will assess its effectiveness by reviewing comments made by faculty on the wiki and the results of a follow-up survey we will offer in the middle of the 2011-2012 academic year. We will publish those results here at that time.
For all related documentation and materials, see our
action project wiki. The faculty version of the wiki (the one faculty will use) can be found
here.
