Strategic professional development for busy teachers: Profile of a high-impact instructional design

Abstract

This NASA-funded professional development project offered Nevada middle school and high school teachers training to support the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in the secondary STEM curriculum. The project took place during the academic school year and - due to time constraints among teacher-participants - challenged organizers to design a professional development experience that would provide essential preliminary safety information and encourage participant-collaboration while making the most of a limited number of hours available for in-person training. In an effort to extend the benefits of the project, teachers completing the training took part in a lesson planning competition, leading to prizes and publication of the top UAS/STEM lesson plans. The training provided opportunities for teachers to master essential safety information, connect with one another, explore flight simulation activities, fly drones, plan lessons, and deliver new curriculum and experiences to students in middle and high school settings. The design of the project was unique in its inclusion of strategic design elements that ranged from an online course site with FAA/safety content and quiz to a keynote/dinner presentation, hands-on workshops, a lesson plan competition, webinars, and a circulating curriculum kit that provided lesson plans and instructional materials to secondary STEM teachers requesting the kit. With limited funds and a total of ten hours of in-person instructional time, this thoughtfully constructed training leveraged online resources, received high ratings from participating teachers, and exceeded its goal of reaching over 1000 students at the middle school and high school level.