“A Piece of Cake.” Developing an Online Course

3 Dec

In 2016, I retired from my principal’s position at Kia Aroha College and, still not ready to put my feet up, decided to develop my own consultancy and pass on the many lessons I had been privileged to learn from the children and community of Otara in South Auckland. That idea grew way faster than I anticipated and, for the next two to three years I travelled all over the country, speaking and running workshops to principals’ groups, teacher only days, Kāhui Ako, as well as at a wide variety of national, and a few international, conferences from early childhood to university level.

Although this was great for my growing business, I was always left with the question, how much did these one-off—or even in some cases—finite series of sessions, really achieve? I had the feeling that, although my presentations were challenging, most times that level of discomfort was short-lived, and they didn’t give audiences enough practical help to really embed change in their practice.

I felt I was making a greater impact on the practice of a small number of principals who had asked if I would become their external appraiser. My initial response to these invitations was a scary email that said I would combine appraisal with mentoring – with an unapologetic emphasis on the mentoring, and I would only work with principals who would commit to a three-year journey to challenge the White spaces in their practice to bring about a major shift to critically conscious, culturally sustaining practice in their leadership and schools.

To their credit, about 10 principals, in some cases with their DPs, survived my email challenge and their work—which I’m sure we could now describe as what the Teaching Council and the Ministry are now calling a “professional growth cycle” or probably a steep growth climb—was real evidence that this work takes far more time, and depth, than a one-off, or series of presentations, no matter how challenging they might be.

The schools include urban and rural, primary, intermediate, and secondary across Auckland, and in Gisborne, Hastings, and Whanganui. All of the contracts with the Boards of these schools contain a statement that the school’s goals intentionally go beyond the goals of documents like Tātaiako or Ka Hikitia, or the professional standards themselves, to develop cultural standards specific to that school and their community. These are not ‘add-ons’ or extra work for principals and teachers but are their interpretations of what the Standards for the Teaching Profession look like through a cultural lens in their schools and communities.

So, the question for me was how could I spread that approach further, and the concept of online courses that could bring the learning to people in a more meaningful and direct way, was born.

I also heard, over and over again, from the principals and schools I was working with, their frustration at not being able to find this type of PLD, with all the associated complaints about the costs of having to release teachers to use face-to-face PLD hours, and especially how hard getting to any PLD was for smaller schools.

So, I thought, why not PLD at your own pace – and when it suits you, a sort of “PLD in your pyjamas” approach?

This wasn’t a completely new idea for me. Towards the end of 2017, I had nervously pushed ‘pay now’ on the purchase of an expensive programme guaranteed to walk you step by step towards the development of your online course and wealth beyond your wildest dreams! Yeah right! Paying for the programme was traumatic enough and it sat in a folder, unopened, for the next 18 months while I kept busy on the speaking and workshop circuit.

The idea, however, didn’t go away. In 2018, I finally opened and read all the programme content. It was a start to finish concept where you found your idea, planned your course, built your contacts list, designed, built, and hosted your course, and launched it into the online stratosphere! To be fair, it had some good ideas. The closed Facebook group was full of members’ stories – both of huge success, and complete failure! There were suggestions and reviews about the technology and dire warnings about “third party” engagement. The strong message was to do it all yourself. I explored all the suggestions, and went through the planning steps but, other than the cost factor, I didn’t get the problem with paying for the expertise of those who did this for a living!

Of course, I talked to my education and media-savvy whānau—a lot! Ever-‘helpful’, their advice ranged from “Why would you want to do that?” to “That’s a great idea!” The most popular position went along the lines of, “It will be a piece of cake, Mum! All you need to do is put what you have in your book, and what you are already talking about, into a course. You won’t need new material, you have it all.” There were associated warnings. “Don’t write too much, like you usually do,” and “keep it simple.”

So, semi-convinced it was still a good idea, in November last year, I travelled to Taranaki to talk with a course designer and course platform provider and we set a launch date for Course 1 for January this year.

How crazy was I to think it was going to be relatively easy to transfer what I was going around talking about to a virtual learning experience? THAT lesson was one we all learned thanks to COVID in 2020, but pre-COVID I certainly was unprepared for the steep learning curve it required.

Now, 12 months down the track, the series of three courses is launched. Writing them has been the equivalent of writing my book, with a greater word-count! For those 12 months, through Christmas, COVID lockdowns, and the disruptions of 2020 there were very few days, including weekends, when I wasn’t course-writing, planning, or researching – and worrying about whether anyone would actually sign up!

I appreciate, therefore, the large number of people who are now engaged in working their way through the courses. Some are working as individuals others have enrolled as groups. 50% of course participants are teachers—both primary and secondary— 20% are principals and almost 30%, surprisingly, are PLD facilitators! Although my work is always directed primarily at those of us who are Pākehā and tangata tiriti, almost a third of course participants are Māori, which has been a real affirmation of the relevance of the work. All the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Whew!

Another milestone has been the approval of the Ministry of Education to accept the courses for PLD Hours funding. There were two catalysts for embarking on that journey: the requests from principals who wanted to sign up more of their staff, and the launch of the new national PLD priorities at the end of 2020.

After being well-known for claiming I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than go down the accreditation pathway due to my determination I would not limit this work to narrow literacy and numeracy outcomes, I had a change of perspective with the new priorities. Cultural capability, local curriculum design, assessment for learning, and digital fluency, underpinned by the principles of Kaupapa Māori, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, inclusion, and critical consciousness seemed right up my alley and completely aligned with my three courses. The MOE process has been another steep learning curve and again, come January 2021, it will be great to welcome and appreciate an influx of course participants who will be able to take on this learning, thanks to the MOE funding.

So, looking back over the last 12 months, what were the lessons learned? I know now:

that talking about a topic for an hour, then running a couple of workshops is NOTHING like writing 150 hours (50 hours per course) of PLD. It doesn’t even equal one of the fifteen modules (5 per course) supposed to take about 10 hours to complete. So much for, “It will be a piece of cake, Mum!”
that writing a book, where people can choose to read it, or not, is very different from writing an interactive course where you actually need people to participate
that deciding to use experts in course-production and hosting was a great decision – thanks Learner Me in Taranaki, where Simon and Luke painstakingly constructed my course from the videos and activities that I (later on with help from my daughter, Dr Keri Milne-ihimaera and granddaughter, Kairangi Ihimaera) produced, rendered, and sent to him – nearly always later than I had promised.
that writing a few social media posts does not equate to marketing and promotion – thanks Hayden Shearman for all your patient advice. Who knew about “dark posts” for advertising purposes, Google Adwords, carousel advertisements, targeted audiences, and the ‘customer journey’? NOT me! Nor did I realise that promotion is a never-ending process! Mindful of the Māori whakatauki that the kumara never speaks about its own sweetness, uncomfortably, this kumara had to learn to speak – about everything, including myself!
that I am better at fronting promotional videos and online webinars than I thought I would be – but that doesn’t mean I like it!
about the stress of silence! So, people are working through the course – do they like it, is it relevant, is it challenging – enough, too much? TALK to me, course people! Luckily, a big group finally completed my user survey, and I could relax a tad. They thought it was great!
about the power of free stuff! Free tools, free webinars were accessed by hundreds!
that there are endless questions to ask and decisions to make that I would never have thought of:
- Course format – video, slides, print? Video with you in it, up in a corner, or just your voice? Variety – how long before your course members doze off? What keeps them engaged?
- Activities – assignments, marking, feedback? NO! It’s about you reflecting on your practice, so no assignments, no marking. What then? A course journal you can write in – or come up with your own way of recording your thinking.
- Monitoring? How do I know people are actually doing the course? I can see individual progress, but actually, progress is up to the participants. That took me a while to understand. Someone told me they “Netflixed” the course, intensively in one week of the holidays. Okay then! I am now about to send six-monthly printouts of the percentage of course/s progress to groups where their study is funded by the BOT - a fair enough expectation I think.
- People want practical action that they can take and implement in their class or school. How do you make this relevant to all the different participants from ECE to university and PLD providers?
- How do you protect your I.P., your course content? What prevents it from being copied or used by others who have just borrowed a password (that’s a secret I know now). I needed legal advice on intellectual property. I found out about copyright, Creative Commons and commercial licences and why I couldn’t just use any image off the internet.
- Pricing – how much is enough, too much, covers your costs, breaks even? Thanks Stephen Hill at Opportuna CA for all your projections and advice. I thought I already had a business, but this took it to a whole new level in terms of decisions
- Admin - previously my admin tasks were preparing for presentations, and mentoring meetings, booking or arranging travel, sending invoices, and not forgetting tax returns. Now, I was slowly sinking under the extra workload - course registrations, enrolments, information requests, and payments, when all I needed to be doing was course-writing. Enter more whānau - daughter-in-law, Kelly Milne, my “P.A. from her house” who just took all of that off my shoulders, remembers everything I didn’t know I’d forgotten, and whose workload is about to get a whole lot bigger!

So, the courses are all active. People are engaged online. The Ministry of Education has approved the online environmrent. Schools are applying for hours—or continuing to fund the courses themselves. Now, there is another issue I didn’t anticipate.

The idea of the courses was to reduce my travel and give people the opportunity for authentic deep learning, at their pace and in their place. I feel as though everything I have learned and researched over decades is in the courses. While definitely not “a piece of cake”, it was certainly a labour of love. Ask me, where can I learn more about White spaces? Answer: Course 1. How do we go about developing Graduate Profiles? What about assessment? Course 3. Authentic local curriculum? Culturally sustaining pedagogy? Course 2. Cultural capability, critical consciousness, White privilege, anti-racism, decolonising the curriculum and changing our thinking? All the courses!

Virtual, online learning is here to stay. While I would love to meet you in person, and will be doing that online, in the most non-kumara, non-‘markety’ way possible, I want to say the best value for your money, for learning that ‘sticks’ is not to get me to come to talk to hundreds of people at your conference days, but to put those funds towards enrolling as many staff as possible on the courses, then, in subsequent application rounds, growing that critical mass, and that’s a new piece of learning for us all.