Heartland

Heartland AEA 11 Online Learning Vision
All Heartland staff and clients will engage in high quality professional learning to enhance practice and improve student results.
 * Vision Statement:**

Heartland's professional learning opportunities support the agency vision and mission. We promote continuous learning for all Heartland staff and clients that is grounded in research and best practices, focused on outcomes, and aligned with agency initiatives and district needs.
 * Mission Statement:**

We strive to use technology to provide high quality learning opportunities that enhance learning, provide customized instruction, allow for collaboration, and are available at any time and any place at the pace of the learner.

In order to create a viable online professional development model that offers quality training suited to the learner’s needs, we will… • Differentiate common terminology and types of online learning to be pursued. • Identify best practices to form a research base for our online professional development model. • Determine standards and criteria for evaluation of courses and teaching to ensure that courses are high quality • Develop a course proposal procedure unique to the online setting • Enter into a collaborative with other AEAs in the state to jointly determine and guide online learning. This collaborative would share vision, input, decision-making, resources, and costs related to online trainings. • Collaborate with additional stakeholders, including the BOEE, ILO, IPTV, the DE, and Universities/Community Colleges, to look for common areas of possible partnerships. • Establish a mentoring program to help train would-be instructors to be effective in an online teaching environment. This includes coursework as well as practicum mentoring. • Maintain a system of ongoing program evaluation to analyze and look for ways to improve.
 * Goals and Action Steps:**