Open Education 2015

Rural Idaho Schools often lack the support to offer a mentorship program to new teachers. This professional development opportunity targeted teachers with three or fewer year of experience. The goal was to immerse teachers in a blended learning environment that modeled best practices and introduced the benefits of utilizing open education resources. The community of learners created during this institute would provide a support structure for new teachers in rural schools. During the five day institute, teachers began developing the qualities and skills of a blended teacher, evaluated an LMS, built a library of open education resources in an LMS to support their content areas, and created digital assessments to provide timely data and feedback to guide instruction. The institute also continued for 5 follow-up days throughout the school year which included two group meetings, two video conferences, and one visit from facilitators to each teachers' classroom.

This free summer institute was a collaborative effort between the University of Idaho's Doceo Center for Innovation + Learning and the Idaho Digital Learning Academy (IDLA) to introduce new teachers to the tools and pedagogy of blended learning with open education resources. Blended learning gives Idaho's rural school students the opportunity to experience courses beyond what is possible on site within the district. Use of open education resources allow schools to reconfigure budgets to support the purchase of more technology in place of texts to enable more opportunities for access to both blended learning and open education resources.

This presentation will share feedback and lessons learned from the Blended Learning With Open Education Summer Institute. Feedback will include that from participating teachers, building administrators from each teacher's school, and institute facilitators.