Chapter 8: E-Books for High School Computer Science Teachers

Online computer science teacher professional learning opportunities offer advantages in time and costs, but only if they are actually effective for teacher learning. Effective learning is engaging and creates opportunities for practice, without overwhelming the learner with too much cognitive load. We describe a model for online computer science teacher development using e-books whose design is guided by principles from the learning sciences. We call our model examples+practice because of the emphasis on “worked examples” and “practice” at different levels of challenge. The results from our design-based research suggest that the e-books are efficient and effective for CS teacher learning.