DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF B-LEARNING COURSES FOR IN SERVICE TEACHERS OF CHILE. PROFESSIONAL TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Corporacion Programa Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Educacion (CHILE)
About this paper:
Conference name: 9th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 14-16 November, 2016
Location: Seville, Spain
Abstract:
The Ministry of Education of Chile has implemented training courses for in service teachers through its Platform E-Learning; http://www.e-mineduc.cl/
Two of the courses that were designed and executed during the years 2015 and 2016 were "Planning and Evaluation in the Media Professional Technical Education" and "Teaching Strategies in Professional Technical Education". These courses involve a total of 700 teachers from Professional Technical highschools in Chile.
Currently the management of virtual learning platforms is essential in the work of training in service teachers, reason for which this presentation seeks to analyze the impact obtained with the use of B-Learning with the help of the Moodle platform, in the on site training with the company of virtual courses implemented by the Ministry of Education of Chile. The study focuses on aspects such as the description of the main activities carried out to achieve the proposed goals and also take into account the contributions offered by investigations using Moodle in the training of in service teachers. The results show the potential that this form of education has presented leaving positive changes through its use. The platform can be used in the design of most activities focused on getting teachers to achieve teaching skills proposed by the Ministry of Education, thereby obtaining an invaluable, effective educational resource. Thus, pleasant learning environments are generated, helping to increase educational quality and reduce the digital divide present in teachers of secondary Professional Technical Education of Chile.
The organization that collaborated with the design and implementation of these two courses was the Corporation Interdisciplinary Education Research Program (PIIE).
The courses were implemented under the competence approach. In the Virtual Platform were the topics or units with learning resources for each week contemplating Learning Guides, exercises, teaching reflection around the challenges presented, formative and summative evaluation.
In addition to having the support Virtual platform in learning processes, a Guide was distributed to the participant, the support Book and a pendrive with all documents for the times when they were not connected to the Internet.
At the beginning of the course a Pre-Test was implemented to detect prior learning of each teacher. At the end of the course it was implemented a Post Test that served to verify the acquisition of teaching skills of participating teachers
Main findings:
• It has improved the quality of teaching-learning process for teachers
• It was observed that teachers that are responsible and methodical, are able to improve their learning level with help of B-Learning training
• It can be shown that the virtual platform itself does not guarantee quality of education
• The in site classes were more active and profitable, since most of the teachers came with more prior knowledge about the topic to be treated, dramatically improving the pedagogical activities in the in site classroom session
The results obtained in this paper serve as encouragement to continue doing this kind of experience, not only with teachers of secondary Professional Technical schools but also with all teachers in the educational system in Chile, giving thus a support to in site and virtual training classroom to generate in them a more meaningful learning.Keywords:
In-service training and Professional development of teachers, e-learning experiences.