Online Technology Teacher Professional Development Courselets: Design and Development Nathaniel Ostashewski Athabasca University Canada nostashewski@me.com Abstract: Online teacher professional development (oTPD) is being seen as an opportunity for teachers to explore online learning while engaging with professional development activities at a distance. The context of this pilot study is an online educator’s community developed to support technology professional development activities at a distance. This paper presents the findings of the pilot study that initiated a design based research program intended to develop a model of oTPD within social networking software. The oTPD unit of participation introduced in this paper is the Courselet: a content focused unit of professional development delivered within a social networking site. Findings of this pilot study indicate Courselet components, such as peer discussions, video exemplars, and identification of online resources, have value for teachers participating in the oTPD activities. As this paper presents the first report stemming from an oTPD design based research program, an initial oTPD design-delivery model is presented. Introduction Students embrace new technologies and innovations as quickly as they are developed, however, educational institutions do not tend to follow (Brown, 1992; Cuban, 2001). Educational technology innovations are slow to implement and are becoming increasingly more complex to sustain (Bereiter, 2002; Brown, 1992). One of the challenges to sustaining these innovations is teacher access to professional development and ongoing support needed in order to successfully implement the innovation. The goal of teacher PD is to increase the knowledge and skills of teachers with the understood goal of improving student learning (Dede, Ketelhut, Whitehouse, Breit, & McCloskey, 2009). Unfortunately, most technology PD is delivered as single events or workshops that do not meet the access, skill development, or ongoing support needs of teachers. This research is grounded in an online teacher professional development (oTPD) delivery model addressing technology professional development topics described as “Courselets.” Courselets are online content focused PD mini-courses of about 10 hours of teacher interaction time delivered within a social networking framework (Desimone, 2009; Dodge & Molebash, 2005). The value of utilizing the online social networking framework is that it supports and encourages individuals to learn together while allowing them to retain control over their time, space, presence, activity, identity and relationships (Anderson, 2006). The literature has identified a critical need for research in oTPD that is accessible, of high quality, and which affects teaching practices (Dede, Ketelhut, Whitehouse, Breit, & McCloskey, 2009; Sprague, 2006). The Courselet oTPD delivery model is an example of exactly this kind of just-in-time ongoing support. This paper reports on the initialization and piloting of a design based program of research centered on the development of online technology Courselets. Online teacher professional development within social networking software is new in terms of how teachers access PD, and there is considerable potential for teacher educator providers to utilize inexpensive, scalable, social networking software that is capable of providing asynchronous teacher PD. Increased learning and increased access to high quality courses are the major benefits of online learning reported for K-12 students (Southern Regional Education Board, 2009). These benefits appear applicable to teacher professional development where the need for high quality online teacher professional development is identified as critically important (Borko, 2004; Dede, 2006).