The interactive e-learning environment of a learning management system allows K-12 educators to expand traditional educational training programs into an online staff development solution for educators and administrators. This migration of training toward staff development programs allows for more flexibility to accomplish a wealth of professional development goals. You can leverage the power of a learning management system to allow the staff development department to expand toward an online learning environment for their educators and faculty members. Staff development programs offered on the internet allow you to harness the power of the web to provide distance learning opportunities for your educators. Traditional time and space requirements of training programs are nonexistent when implementing interactive staff development programs.

Breaking down the traditional walls of face-to-face instruction allows for more progressive online instruction to occur. A learning management system will allow you to complete staff development programs at your leisure, instead of having the detrimental task of traveling to and from a training seminar.

Benefits of staff development for educators:

1. Less travel for your faculty and staff

2. More flexibility in completing your training program.

3. Ability to complete staff development programs in the confines of your home or classroom.

4. Online staff development program can be tailored around your schedule.

Online staff development programs allow you to provide training around teacher’s schedules and family obligations, instead of dictating the parameters of training. Accommodating learners who need more flexibility is a key component of a learning management system. Providing an online learning portal for educators allows them the opportunity to complete staff development modules at their convenience. Staff development programs that expand upon teacher’s lifetime learning can be achieved during the weekends in the comfort of their home or during conference periods at school. Lifetime learning is an important component to any institution, especially one as vital as shaping the hearts and minds of future leaders of tomorrow.

The time spent developing staff development programs can become quite cumbersome for training personnel. Once appropriate content is developed, adding performance measures to augment the online content is extremely important. For example, a staff development program that simply provides regurgitated true/false questions at the end of the training program is not beneficial to teachers. In addition, staff development programs must be well thought out, or they may become an ill advised solution to your staff development needs. Simply putting together a few facts and figures will not ultimately benefit your faculty and staffs continuing education needs. Another problem associated with staff development programs is how to assure teachers are taking the specified time to complete programs. For your training program to be successful, appropriate measures need to be taken to time out individual completing online staff development programs when they fail to hit a keystroke after a few minutes. Taking the appropriate precautions when developing staff development programs can assure the distance learning media chosen will benefit your targeted recipients.

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