Abstract:

The technological information and communication opportunities have led to a media-driven transformation process which affects both social and economic areas and furthermore fields of education. Teachers are dealing with new learning tasks and objectives that require new knowledge and skills. The use of digital media in schools has led to the development of a new teaching and learning culture with the aim of improving the basic quality of the school and the lesson itself. Training the teachers – as an element of personnel development in the context of a successful school development (Bachmaier, 2011) - can improve the teaching and learning performance of a school. Therefore, new approaches for teacher training and continuing education are needed. Media education of students can only be promoted only if teachers process digitization-related competences.

In the last years, many efforts have been made to expand the technical infrastructure in schools in Germany and therefore to support the digital transformation in education. However, teachers need further support and guidance with focus on improving their media-didactic competencies. In the project "Teaching with Digital Media in Saxony - UndiMeS", teachers are going to train and develop such competencies by attending an online training program.

For a scientific based conception, quality indicators for online teacher trainings needed to be determined. Through a literature review and a qualitative research, quality characteristics for media-supported trainings for teachers have been identified and categorized based on an evaluation theoretical model (Wuttke, Wolf & Mindnich, 2009, p. 111f). Virtual group interviews with experts and teachers from different educational institutions and school types in the federal state of Saxony in Germany, revealed crucial factors regarding the development of teacher trainings.

This paper is devoted to the question of the essential quality factors for online teacher trainings. Based on the outcomes from the literature review and the conducted qualitative research, the essential factors as well as the most challenging quality factors will be presented. It will be explained, which theoretical model for the development of e-learning opportunities in the educational sector can be used. Furthermore, the following contradictions that emerged from the results will be discussed:
• „Should online media-didactic teacher trainings convey subject-specific or universal digital competencies?”
• “Should tool trainings be embedded in the training program and can they promote universal media-didactic competencies?”

In this context, the requests of the teachers are compared with pedagogically appropriate methods and concepts for online teacher trainings. It would be interesting to see if these results match with those from the literature review and if they can be applied in real life scenarios.

References:
[1] Bachmaier, R. (2011). Fortbildung Online, Entwicklung, Erprobung und Evaluation eines tutoriell betreuten Online-Selbstlernangebots für Lehrkräfte. Universität Regensburg.
[2] Wuttke, E., Wolf, Karsten D. & Mindnich, A. (2009). Möglichkeiten der Evaluation von e-Learning Arrangements. Eine Analyse am Beispiel von EverLearn. In Holten, R., & Nittel, D. (Hrsg.), E-Learning in Hochschulen und Weiterbildung – Einsatzchancen und Erfahrungen. Bielefeld: W. Bertelsmann Verlag

Keywords:

e-learning, online teacher training, media-didactic quality indicators, digital competencies, media-supported training, teacher training.