Support for Learners

According to Bates (2015), it is important to have ongoing communication between the instructor and participants, especially when in an online environment. I will communicate with learners in a variety of ways. I will email them, I will talk with them on the weekly Zoom calls, I will give feedback on their reflections, and I will also be available to talk to them on the phone if that is their preferred means of communication. One way to alleviate the amount of communication, these new instructional coaches will also have a monthly communication with their coach cadre and coordinator coach. Although I created the course, there are eight of us that will be supporting the instructional coaches depending on who is assigned to who. We will also have mentor meetings and periodic check ins with their coach mentors. We really want them to have multiple avenues to access help wherever they may need it.

The course will be a mixture of the 2. It will be self paced and available as a resource for all experienced instructional coaches. If they need ideas or are stuck in an Impact Cycle, they can come here for tips or reminders of nuances of each stage. For new instructional coaches, I gave a loose deadline so that they can have room for issues that impact their work that is out of their control, such as teacher quarantines and other issues that might arise. I gave them a 2 week window for each module. I have found as an instructional coach previously myself and the issues my group has now, that if given a completely open window to do this, it will quickly go to the bottom of the list of things to do because of all that this job entails. The Impact Cycle is very complex and each one has its own trickiness and obstacles. It is important for them to keep the momentum, but also do it in a natural progression.

If I need to update my course, I will send out a notification if it impacts what they are currently working on. Otherwise, I will just change it since it is ongoing for all of them after they complete it. I will be consistently adding great examples of coaching videos to each module so that new coaches have examples and colleagues to reach out to for support.
What other courses can you develop into online learning experiences?

My next course that I am making for our district is for virtual teachers. We are going to reach out to some of our expert virtual teachers to create a course for incoming virtual teachers to give tips on different things they have learned about the nuances of online teaching and learning. This will be for existing virtual teachers and for new ones that onboard next year.

I would wait to create corresponding documents until the end because I made changes along the way and that impacted several documents that I then had to go change every time I made a little adjustment.

As instructional coaches access and use the different parts of the course, we will send out a Google form to get feedback on what was successful and what can be removed. They can also tell us what kinds of supports they would like to see going forward. Our instructional coaches are great about giving feedback and giving ideas for next steps. This is one of the reasons this course was created. I can't wait to see what they ask for next!

When it comes to support, our district curriculum and instruction department already has many great supports in place for our instructional coaches and coordinators. Each year, we get formal training from a consultant around the Impact Cycle book. As a coordinator team, we also devote a part of our monthly instructional coach meeting to a certain part of the Impact Cycle based on feedback we are getting from them where they need more clarity. We utilize instructional coaches who are doing a great job to provide examples and training sometimes too.