Dive Brief:

• The University of North Dakota and Whitewater Learning have teamed up to create a digital professional development program for licensed education professionals across the nation.
• The virtual program costs $50 per semester and allows users to earn graduate-level professional development credits.
• A press release for the program focuses heavily on the PD's online component, saying that it saves time and stress since educators can complete the program when it's most convenient for them.

Dive Insight:

While teachers are, in fact, busy individuals and one would want PD to feel informative not stressful, sometimes online programs oversell the digital aspect. PD should be thoughtful, and sometimes mass-produced, online programming can feel more like a hassle to complete than something that actually benefits and helps a teacher's classroom. You don't want it to be a looming, four-hour online course that a teacher has to finish like driver's ed.

Think back to advice from Dr. Philip Lanoue, the 2015 Superintendent of the Year. Lanoue says his district has 14 professional development days where teachers actually analyze data and work together. Online PD may sound like a tech dream, as it can be completed anywhere, but administrators should also be mindful of the school culture they want to create. Do they want PD to be collaborative, with educators talking and working together on real school issues? Or do they want it to be sterile, completed in solitude, and dealing with "off-the-shelf" issues?