A study earlier this year revealed that not only are most MOOC users college-degree holding students, but teachers make up a majority of MOOC users too. That raises the question of what professional development tools teacher have available—and what can be done to add more.

"Every state requires some form of ongoing education for teachers; the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has said the United States spends about $2.5 billion on it every year," according to The Atlantic. But Duncan is aware that most teachers aren't feeling the effects of this investment, and that more needs to be done.

Most professional development offerings for teachers are dated and rendered useless, the article said.

MOOCs represent the direction where professional development for teachers should be going- digital, and focused on the work of successful educators.

It's already a practice that has started to work. "Having teachers watch their peers model classroom methods in real time has already proven to be an effective way of helping them improve their practice, experts say," according to the article.

Indeed, if MOOCs continue on this trajectory and continues to help educators be better at his or her profession, it might help change American education as a whole.

“'We’ve seen already that the interactive nature of the online experience, with sustained coaching and ongoing engagement, can really change everything about how we help teachers become teaching rock stars,'" Alvin Crawford, the CEO of Knowledge Delivery Systems (KDS), which provides interactive professional-development programming for teachers, said to The Atlantic.

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Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

06/24/2015