What is an eWorkshop?
Our eWorkshops are innovative online multi-media resources to support individuals and professional learning communities of educators who wish to inquire into and improve their practice with multilingual learners. Our eWorkshops follow a three-part learning cycle that is repeated across six units of study. Each unit of study takes about three hours to complete. Our three-part learning cycle includes:
Part 1: Explore
In Explore, participants engage with interesting content (videos, multimedia resources, concise readings) to explore new ideas related to the topic of the eWorkshop.
Part 2: Make it Work
In Make it Work, participants are given multiple options to choose from with ideas of how to take the new learning from Explore and put it into practice. One of the options is always “You Make it Work,” where participants can create their own option or tweak the ones we have provided to ensure their work is meaningful and practical for their local context.
Part 3: Share
In Share, participants upload materials and reflections from their Make it Work efforts to discuss the opportunities, experiences, challenges, successes, etc. that they encountered.
What is a mini eWorkshop?
Our mini-eWorkshops are innovative online multi-media resources to support individuals and professional learning communities of educators who wish to inquire into and improve their practice with multilingual learners. Our mini eWorkshops follow a three-part learning cycle (see above) that is repeated across 1, 2, or 3 units of study. Each unit of study takes about three hours to complete. Mini eWorkshops with 1 unit of study require about 3 hours of work time to complete. Mini eWorkhsops with 2 units of study require about 6 hours of work time to complete. Mini eWorkshops with 3 units of study require about 9 hours of work time to complete.
Where do the eWorkshops and mini eWorkshops come from?
In 2011, a $1.9 million grant was awarded to the University of Colorado Denver from the federal Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition to design high quality professional learning for educators of multilingual students, particularly in content classrooms such as mathematics and science. This project, eCALLMS (PR Award # T365Z110177), created 33 eWorkshops and ended in August 2016.
In September 2016, a $2.7 million grant was awarded to the University of Nebraska Lincoln to continue working with the eWorkshops. The new project, ICMEE (PR Award # T365Z160351), expanded access to the existing eWorkshops to at least 10 new states (and close to 4000 teachers), designed more eWorkshops for varying groups of educators (administrators, school psychologists, etc.) and researched the impact and outcomes of eWorkshop participation. The ICMEE grant ended in August 2021, but the coalition of educators interested in supporting multilingual education continues on.
To learn more details about the ICMEE project, please click here.
How do I get started with an eWorkshop?
Now that we no longer have federal funding to offer our eWorkshops free of charge, we are exploring the possibilities of offering them at low cost so that the high quality content we have developed can continue supporting teachers and the labor involved in offering them is funded. Currently, we are only offering eWorkshops during structured offerings. Our next opportunity is during Spring 2023 from January-March.
How much do I have to pay?
We are working to keep our content available to educators at as low of a cost as possible (only charging what is necessary to cover the labor involved in offering our work). Our next opportunity to take eWorkshops is during the Spring of 2023 and will cost $200 per participant for up to 27 hours of professional learning. We encourage interested participants to seek funding from their schools and/or districts to cover the cost of this small fee.
What eWorkshops exist?
Please click here to read about our eWorkshops content. We have eWorkshops that focus on all grade levels K-12, various content areas (science, math, social studies and English language arts), as well as on the work of teachers working with deaf students, school leaders, and school psychologists.
Are eWorkshops private?
The work you do in an ICMEE eWorkshop is only viewed by the other participants taking that same eWorkshop. This means that if you are the only person taking an eWorkshop, you will be the only one outside of the ICMEE team who can see your work. We do encourage participants to recruit/organize into groups or at least to take an eWorkshop with a partner to have a collaborator to discuss the work with.
How do the eWorkshops work?
Our eWorkshops follow a three-part learning cycle that is repeated across six units of study.
Part 1: Explore
In Explore, participants engage with interesting content (videos, multimedia resources, concise readings) to explore new ideas related to the topic of the eWorkshop.
Part 2: Make it Work
In Make it Work, participants are given multiple options to choose from with ideas of how to take the new learning from Explore and put it into practice. One of the options is always “You Make it Work,” where participants can create their own option or tweek the ones we have provided to ensure their work in meaningful and practical for their local context.
Part 3: Share
In Share, participants upload materials and reflections from their Make it Work efforts to discuss the opportunities, experiences, challenges, successes, etc. that they encountered.
I can’t log in. What do I do?
If you have started to use an eWorkshop and are having troubles logging back in, make sure you are using the Canvas company website when you are trying to login to your eWorkshop.
If you are still having troubles logging in, please reach out to Dr. Kara Viesca at kara.viesca@unl.edu.
What do educators say about the eWorkshops?
With over a decade of experiences offering our eWorkshops, we have received a lot of feedback from educators that has shaped what are our eWorkshops now are and how they work. Over the coures of our last grant, we had ~90% of our eWorkshop participants rate the eWorkshops as effective in improving their practice working with multilingual students. We also used pre-post measures to examine learning from the eWorkshop on independent measures and consistently found statistically significant growht from our eWorkshop participants. This was even true for teachers who already had a great deal of expertise in working with multilingual students. However, the largest growth was seen with teachers who did not yet have a lot of opportunity to learn about or work with multilingual students. Overall, our eWorkshops are popular with educators and provide strong, flexible, and relevant learning opportunties for educators working with multilingual students.
Is an eWorkshop right for me?
The eWorkshops were designed for in-service educators across varying grade levels and varying content areas as well as specialties. Educators with master’s degrees in English as a Second Language have found value in the eWorkshops as have those who have never taken a class or participated in professional learning regarding working with multilingual students. Because our eWorkshops are flexible in terms of how educators engage with the content, they are also highly differentiated for each educator that participates to be able to take ownership over their own learning. Educators are most successful in our eWorkshops when they enjoy what they are learning and find it relevant to their immediate practice. This is most attainable when educators have substantial choice and control over their engagement and participation. Therefore, our eWorkshops are developed to provide exactly that.
If this sounds like something for you, please join our Spring 2023 Session!