Canter's web transition guided by its vision and DL experience

Heller Report on Educational Technology Markets, April, 2001

As web-based professional development programs proliferate, ETM took the opportunity to talk with Kathy Winberry and Barbara Schadlow, both long-time employees of Canter and Associates (Santa Monica, CA), to get their perspective on making the transition to the web. Canter specializes in producing programs and materials that enhance the teaching skills of K-12 teachers and is a pioneer in the use of distance learning for professional development.

For over 10 years the company has delivered their professional development courses in distance learning format -- a series of videos supplemented by collaborative activities and supported by university partners. The transition to the web is just one more step for a company that traces its roots to onsite training workshops. It is another way to meet one of Canter's primary goals -- that of making their programs easily accessible to teachers.

Kathy Winberry, general manager for Canter, told ETM that when they started in the late 70s, everything was site-based. They fielded a cadre of trainers who went onsite to deliver one-day workshops. But they quickly realized that one-day workshops weren't enough, leading to the development of weeklong, in-depth seminars that could be offered to teachers in the summer. Canter also knew that it was important that there be some graduate credit attached to the experience, since teachers needed to satisfy the various requirements for salary advancement and professional licensure, so they began to develop university partnerships.

Canter reached a point between 1980 and 1990 when, despite offering more than 70 weeklong courses all over the country and partnering with more than 50 universities, teachers continued to say that they could not access the training. It was then that the need for video-based courses manifested. Canter was about making training accessible, so the question was, what's another way of doing the same thing. Winberry says they started the video courses by actually videotaping some of the live weeklong courses. They moved quickly from that to really figuring out how to move from what had been a live experience into a distance learning experience. That required totally changing the way Canter developed product--the way they produced the video, the way they developed print materials, the way they involved teachers and engaged them in the activities.

That experience with video has served them well as they have prepared to add web-based delivery to their product line. According to Barbara Schadlow, vp of product development, two years ago Canter embarked quite thoughtfully on a course that was a hybrid between their traditional video program and an online course. "We knew teachers would need skills to get them ready for the e-learning revolution, so we moved then into it very slowly with "How to Use the Internet in Your Classroom." Schadlow says that the course design hand-holds teachers through the experience of understanding the use of the Internet from a pedagogical perspective and then moves into practical applications. "The course is easier than a regular online course, since the users don't have to go very far outside into the whole Internet to find what they need, and they are not required to collaborate," Schadlow says. It's a very basic, entry-level course that prepares their customers for a full online course.

Online Pilot

Winberry notes that as they began to move into the online world, they already had the arrows in their backs. "We already knew where the pitfalls were likely to be. We knew the calls and the questions. And we also understood that this technology is even more complicated and teachers are even more unfamiliar with learning in this way," says Winberry. Canter has been working for over a year on a pilot of an online product. They investigated the existing platforms and courses and dissected their own product. They got extensive feedback from existing and potential customers. Then they worked with a platform company to customize a platform and went out with a pilot course.

The pilot is a course on motivational and instructional strategies. "We intentionally chose an area that had nothing to do with technology," says Schadlow, "because we wanted to carefully separate and evaluate the teachers' issues with technology as well as the learning that was going on." It's also a course that traditionally has received very high evaluations. "We wanted to know that if the feedback wasn't positive, it couldn't have to do with the content. It had to do with the delivery of the content and the way we were structuring it and the way that the technology might have been getting in the way," Winberry adds.

Canter continues to send VHS tapes with the course. The Canter model is built on delivering national experts right into teachers' homes and a typical course uses 6 to 8 hours of video. Since teacher access to broadband is limited, video is a viable solution. All course work is asynchronous, based on teacher feedback. Teachers are guided online through all of the activities. They are presented with their objectives, told to think about a specific issue, told when to turn on the video and when to do a reading and then guided through the collaboration. Teachers are assigned to a cohort group and they collaborate around a question that Canter has structured for them. They answer questions related to the discussion. Then they are moved into the application of their new information in the classroom, writing about the type of classroom lessons they will develop, etc. They do content review quizzes that are graded automatically. Content review questions and essay questions are submitted to an evaluator who provides feedback and assigns points for the work. Some video is streamed, in something of a case study mode. Canter's video is heavy on classroom scenes, showing real teachers demonstrating the instructional strategy and those short clips can be streamed to serve as the content for a discussion. Over time, Canter will use more and more of this model.