Teachers' Professional Development in the Digitized World: A Sample Blended Learning Environment for Educational Technology Training

Abstract

Professional development for in-service English language teachers has increasingly become a need in higher education not only in Turkey but across the world. Due to the limited time teachers have and the distance between the source of service and the potential participants, using digitized activities and materials have naturally become a necessity. The purpose of this research is to report the potential impact of the course described below and discuss the role of blended learning experience of professional development on the participating teachers. The theoretical background of the study is experiential learning initiated by Kolb and socio-constructivist learning theory by Vygotsky in that both theories highlight the role of experiencing the change and focus on personal meanings and learning with and from others in real and online environments.