Assembling a Regional Team

Organizing a quality professional learning event for a large multi-stakeholder group is no small feat, which is why it requires assembling a team of committed people to get the job done.

A core component of Seasons of CS, taken from the Summer of CS theory of action, is to deliver CS professional learning regionally. This is in service of providing access to local educators, minimizing travel (when applicable), customizing professional learning content based on regional needs, and maintaining a scale that can meet unique (and perhaps limited) demand. For 2023, the California County Office of Education system will be utilized to offer professional learning to educators in seven distinct regions.

7 California regions to offer Seasons of CS

For each of the seven regions, teams of classified, certificated, and management professionals are encouraged to collaborate to deliver regional CS professional learning beginning in June 2023. For up to 1440 hours, team members may fulfill the following roles:

Project Director

• Plan, maintain, and evaluate the overall vision and goals for the regional professional learning program

• Facilitate ongoing and recurring planning meetings with all stakeholders

• Put out fires

Curriculum/Content Specialist

• Collect, review, and provide feedback on slide decks, digital digests, and workshop agenda

• Facilitate ongoing and recurring meetings with workshop facilitators, in service of expanding facilitator capacity to deliver on the quality professional learning standards

CS Champion

A COE CS Champion will provide leadership and support to ensure that the workshop is aligned with the vision and mission of the EWIG project, the California K-12 Computer Science Standards, and the Quality Professional Learning Standards. This leadership and support will come in the form of synchronous and asynchronous meetings and activities before, during, and after the given workshop.

More details about the role are in the COE CS Champion Description and Workshop Checklist.

Event Coordinator

• Serve as a single point of contact for all aspects of the in-person, hybrid, or virtual professional learning event(s)

• Act as the lead point of contact for speakers

• Triage issues for participants

• Communicate directly with presenters

• Manage facilities and logistics

• Coordinate services provided by support staff

Support Staff for Logistics

• Provide support for event registration and check-in

• Email reminders to workshop participants

• Manage shared email account and distribute inquiries to appropriate staff member for response

• Collect dietary restrictions and other considerations for participant comfort and safety

• Work with evaluation staff to execute data collection activities

Communications, Marketing, and Design Specialist

• Write and implement outreach and communications plan for recruitment

• Design and distribute flyers

• Develop and maintain website

• Create additional collateral materials as needed for event (e.g., handouts, signage)

Finance Manager

• Manage contracts, accounts payables, and accounts receivables

• Execute school MOUs in service of incentivizing participation

• Collect and process invoices from curriculum and professional learning partners

• Distribute funds to participating schools to help offset the cost of participation (e.g., staff time, travel)

Technology Support

• Provide guidance and assistance with all technology needs prior to the event and act as live support and help desk to troubleshoot issues during the event (e.g., wifi connectivity, passwords, A/V testing, connecting speakers and projectors, virtual facilitators/presenters/participants, sharing slides/screen, etc.)

• Coordinate and host “tech check” meetings prior to live workshop events to ensure presenters and facilitators can access virtual platforms.

Research/Evaluation Team

Just because feedback generally is asked for at the end of a PD, it doesn’t mean that research and evaluation should be brought in at the end, either. By having the Research and Evaluation team work in hand-in-hand with the rest of the team provides clarity to the goals of PD, and allows those goals to be reflected in what is being evaluated.

• Work with rest of team to establish goals and understand what can be learned from the event

• Develop surveys and interview protocols

• Develop consent forms and practices

• Coordinate with IRB to approve protocols and consent forms

• Administer, collect, and store consent forms

• Coordinate any audio/video recording, field observations, and/or interviews of researched moments (if applicable)

• Analyze findings

• Present and disseminate findings to team and larger audience