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The meetings were always a moment to learn but also to enjoy being with colleagues and friends, which definitely helped the working process.
As a way to monitor the work and understand my colleagues’ difficulties and how they overcame them I created a Feedback Form, which they started to fill in during the 1st Study Group meeting.
In the first meeting, before starting the course, they had to answer the first 2 questions on the Feedback Form:
- What’s your opinion about participating in this study group?
- What are your expectations about this activity? Justify your answer.
All colleagues referred that participating in this study group was important to improve their teacher practices and get to know innovative tools. An important fact was the creation of the learning group, as they felt more comfortable doing the course together with their peers, taking any doubts that might appear and this way they felt safer. It was a great opportunity to learn more about online training and so their expectations were high and they all said they expected to learn more about online training and how to use these platforms. Ana even said she wanted “to stop being afraid to do the online training because there are very interesting courses to take in different areas”.
They all enjoyed being part of this experience and considered it very interesting and useful. The fact that they had my constant feedback and support was seen as an added value and a reason for its success. The learning network was also an essential element of this experience, as teachers could collaborate, exchange viewpoints and help each other. The course theme, PBL, and the practical aspect of the course made it easier to engage in the activities.
Many teachers struggled with the English language, but still they managed to do all the activities in the course. To be able to do it they used Translation Apps, asked friends, family, the other members of the study group or relied on me, used Portuguese subtitles for the videos, when existing, or adjusted the playback speed.
All of them recommend TA courses, because, as Aldina mentions, they “make it easy for us to train at our own pace, and we have a wide range of very interesting topics. The other advantage lies in the diversity of proposed materials: videos, diagrams, texts and others”. Filipa is also very enthusiastic about these courses: “I would recommend it, because I found the course very interesting and well organized. In the initial phase I had difficulties because beyond the language problem was the difficulty in understanding how online training worked. After finishing the training I not only feel like doing other kind of training but I recommend it to other teachers”. Nazaré goes a bit further and expresses her wish to keep on doing these courses: “I highly recommend this training resource and personally I will continue. The reasons are essentially based on the originality, accessibility and innovation of methodologies that have been used and those that could be implemented”.
This shows that with the adequate motivation and guidance teachers will understand the benefits of online teacher training and will start choosing these courses more and more. If there is a teacher in school responsible for this area of CPD I believe MOOCs will have a higher rate of participation from teachers in general and AECS teachers in particular. The fact that these courses can be accredited by the Portuguese Scientific and Pedagogical Council of Continuing Education (CCPFC) is also an important factor that will make more teachers choose this type of training.