Abstract:

Professional development enables teachers to enhance their instructional practices and to provide, as a result, improved learning opportunities for their students. Although educators acknowledge the importance of professional development programs, their participation in them is often limited due to practical barriers such as time constraints, distant course location and financial costs.

Blended learning, defined as the combination of online and face-to-face instructional experiences, appears to address many of these barriers and has been successfully implemented in teachers’ professional development programs. However, while the literature often suggests that long term professional development is significantly more effective, limited research has explored the potential of very short-duration blended learning programs.

The study reported here addresses this gap by presenting a short duration blended learning course introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its applications in mathematics teaching, specifically designed for primary school teachers. The course lasted four weeks and thirteen primary school teachers with no prior experience in using AI took part in it. It consisted of asynchronous self-study activities, three online webinars and one face-to-face workshop requiring approximately 26 hours of participation.
All the teachers commented positively on the short duration of the course, identifying it as a decisive factor in their decision to attend. All of them worked diligently throughout the course, completing all the quizzes and assignments.

While long-term professional development programs are essential for long-term knowledge retention, this study argues that carefully designed, short-duration, blended learning programs can also play a crucial role by creating opportunities for participation.

Keywords:

Blended Learning, Teachers' Professional Development, Artificial Intelligence.