HGSE News: New WIDE World Initiative Offers Professional Development at a Distance

Today's educators face a complex world of technologies, teaching and learning techniques, and content their students must master. To prepare students for the emerging demands of the future, educators must themselves be continual learners. But many educators work in isolated communities where professional development is hard to come by. WIDE World (Wide-scale Interactive Development for Educators)—a new distance learning initiative from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)—offers educators coaching-based professional development at a distance.

WIDE's highly personalized classes combine the advantages of tailored instruction with the flexibility of working online. Each week, participants log on to the course's web site for the current lecture, engage in activities to learn new strategies, and exchange ideas. Participants receive personal feedback from expert instructors, course coaches, and fellow participants.

WIDE instructors include researchers from HGSE's Project Zero and Educational Technology Center, where the pedagogical framework known as "Teaching for Understanding" was developed. The framework emphasizes developing learners' understanding through active learning that is directly linked to clear goals and supported through ongoing assessment and coaching. WIDE courses are designed using and reflecting this framework, and several of them aim to help educators learn to use the framework in their practice. Current instructors include Stone Wiske, Tina Blythe, Lois Hetland, Julie Viens, and Daniel Gray Wilson. Nathan Finch, a researcher and former teacher, manages the project. The Project was funded by HGSE and Al and Kate Merck.

"WIDE courses engage busy educators in sustained dialogue and reflection about their practice," says Stone Wiske, a lecturer at HGSE who spearheaded the project with colleagues Cliff Baden and David Perkins. "Educators learn as much from one another as from instructors and coaches. And they can participate in professional development from home or school without the struggle of coordinating face-to-face meetings."

WIDE World will offer five online courses when the Winter/Spring 2001 semester begins in early February 2001:

Teaching for Understanding I
Teaching for Understanding II: The Dimensions of Understanding
Assessing for Understanding
Teaching to Standards with New Technology
Multiple Intelligences Theory: Pathways to Practice

Teaching for Understanding I
Helping students to develop understanding has always been an important goal of education—and yet, the problem of how to foster understanding remains a complex one. Teaching for Understanding I is designed to address the following questions: What is understanding? What strategies and techniques do I currently use in my planning and teaching that support student understanding? What is the Teaching for Understanding Framework, and how can I draw upon and adapt it in order to help my students understand more—and more deeply?

Participants will be introduced to the basic elements of the Teaching for Understanding framework and will use it to examine and revise their own planning and practice. Tina Blythe, a researcher and project manager at Project Zero, will teach this course.

Teaching for Understanding II: The Dimensions of Understanding
Teaching for Understanding II extends concepts from the Teaching for Understanding I and Assessing for Understanding courses (see the WIDE World web site for Teaching for Understanding II course pre-requisites). Through working with a rubric called "The Dimensions of Understanding" to design a Teaching for Understanding (TfU) unit, class members will gain deeper appreciation for what understanding means and how focusing on it transforms both planning and carrying out instruction.

Class members will use the four dimensions of understanding—Knowledge, Methods, Purposes, and Forms—with the four elements of the Teaching for Understanding Framework to create a TfU unit for a course that they teach. The course will be taught by Lois Hetland, director of Project Zero's annual summer institutes and a researcher at Project Zero.

Assessing for Understanding
What does it mean to assess for deep understanding? How can I create manageable assessment strategies that honor my students' individuality and foster disciplinary learning? Assessing for Understanding will explore how to develop assessment techniques that promote student understanding.

The course will survey ideas and tools such as rubrics, shared criteria development, and feedback strategies. Each week, participants will engage in discussion groups, read articles, and share assessments they create for their students. Participants will develop a final assessment project, which puts these ideas into practice. Daniel Wilson, a researcher and project manager at Project Zero, will teach this course.

Teaching to Standards with New Technology
Using new technologies and teaching to curriculum standards are often viewed as competing initiatives. Teaching to Standards with New Technology treats them as complementary innovations. Participants will develop a lesson on a topic related to their standards that uses new technology to enhance students' learning. The course applies the Teaching for Understanding framework to focus curriculum, assessment, and the use of technology on development of students' understanding.

Every session includes an informative message from the instructor, additional readings, application of these ideas to curriculum design, and focused exchanges with fellow participants. Assignments will help participants relate this course to practice. Participants will receive frequent feedback and suggestions from experienced coaches. The course instructor is Stone Wiske, co-director of the Educational Technology Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Multiple Intelligences Theory: Pathways to Practice
Since Howard Gardner introduced Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory in 1983, it has grown to be a framework of choice among educators looking for ways to support their efforts at change and innovation in their classrooms. MI makes sense to teachers because they often see in it a theoretical anchor and validation for what they are already doing well, and a language to enhance their practices further. Multiple Intelligences Theory: Pathways to Practice is meant to guide and support participants' deepening understanding of MI theory and of its implications for curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices.

Participants will work on an MI action plan or project, supported by course activities including: lectures, additional readings, online discussions, review of MI resources and current MI practices, and assigned "MI experiences." Participants will get regular feedback and suggestions from experienced coaches as well as opportunities to share their work with other participants. The course instructor is Julie Viens, researcher at Harvard Project Zero and co-manager of the Adult Multiple Intelligences Study at Harvard Project Zero.

For More Information
To enroll in or learn more about WIDE World courses, visit the WIDE World web site. Information about David Perkins and his research can be found in the Faculty Profiles. Information about Stone Wiske and her research can be found in the Faculty Profiles.

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