Where Did You Get That Lesson? Understanding Online Teacher Resource Exchanges

[摘要] Teachers are increasingly using websites as their primary resource for finding instructional materials. These sites often encourage teachers to both upload and download their own materials while leaving ratings and comments about other resources. Yet despite the large number of participants and amount of data generated by these websites, we know relatively little about how they influence teacher selection of resources. The results of two investigations of large-scale popular sites, TeachersPayTeachers and TFANet, are shared. The examination of the data generated by these sites provided distinct patterns of teacher participation and use. Among the findings is the surprising result that a large number of ratings, positive or negative, is a predictor of a resource's popularity. These findings also lead to suggestions for how teacher educators and instructional designers can improve use and operation of online teacher resource exchanges.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh