High-quality professional learning is foundational to educators’ success—and, ultimately, the success of their students—in the classroom.
To provide educators with the high-quality support they both need and deserve, Edthena recently launched VC3, the next evolution of the company’s award-winning video coaching platform. It features new coaching tools that empower teachers and instructional coaches to collaborate more efficiently, gain deeper insights into instructional practice, and engage in more meaningful professional learning.
The core of the coaching experience happens within the platform’s video conversation page. This is where educators add timestamped feedback to videos of classroom teaching. Not only does the updated conversation page in VC3 make it easier to leave comments, it encourages teachers and coaches to deepen their reflections. One example of this emphasis is the Insights tab which helps jumpstart the video analysis process for both coaches and teachers.
The Insights tab includes several AI-generated tools: open-ended questions to help the observer determine what to look for in the video; a student-to-teacher talk time graph to support a deep-dive into student engagement, language development, and confidence; and, a visual representation of the most frequently used words within the lesson to get a sense of the academic language used in the lesson.
This reimagined platform draws upon Edthena’s 14 years of experience helping educators add more than two million comments to nearly seven million minutes of classroom video. This includes educators from schools, districts, and teacher education programs from more than 20 states and multiple countries, including Alief Independent School District in Texas.
“With the help of Edthena, we are harnessing the power of video and innovative AI tools to level up our coaching practices,” says Amanda Maceo, professional development implementation strategist at the district. “We love the automatic summaries and closed captioning—they provide us with valuable insights. Plus, the talk time graph makes it easy to set clear and measurable goals for improvement.” Learn more.
On the spectrum of professional experience for K-12 teachers, I am decidedly on the greener side. Although I knew I had a passion for teaching before entering college, I always had this idea in my head that teaching K-12 education wasn’t a real or appropriate profession for an Ivy League, engineering graduate like myself.
Instead of industry or academia, however, I joined the stream of my peers entering the world of business management consulting. I stayed in this role for only three years before going back to school to teach, but my short stint in the corporate world carried me to the classroom with a perspective that allowed me to see all the ways teaching is treated as a calling rather than a career, and how that impacts school teachers.
Teachers lack the structure and career development of other industry and professional jobs and this is important because it is one major factor in creating a broken public education system. Compared to what I experienced myself and have learned from colleagues and ex-classmates in consulting, finance and tech industries, it feels like this lack of opportunity for career progression within K-12 education disincentivizes a talented, driven and diverse workforce, which in turn inhibits the long term success of the education system.
Put more pointedly, teachers being perceived as saints and martyrs due to the realities of their working conditions, instead of serious professionals, is one of the more glaring issues facing K-12 education in the United States.
We’re Not in Consulting Anymore, Toto…
In my short time in the consulting world, I got a glimpse behind the curtain of how different industries operate. I learned about the massive scale of labor, human capital and strategic investment that go into making a successful organization. As a new college grad, I was lucky to work at a company that held an “up or out” culture and provided clear structures and routines for continuous professional feedback, networking and skill development. I also had great mentors who pushed me to think about what I wanted in a career and shared their experiences and advice to foster my professional growth.
Within public education, growth options are almost entirely outside the classroom, either through administration, teacher education or curriculum development. One common path that some teachers will take to advance is to go back to school and pursue an administrative credential to become a principal or vice principal, but it is a significant pivot and career change.
While I also have incredible mentors in teaching, when I asked my closest mentor for constructive professional feedback before she went on a sabbatical, the only thing she did was implore me not to get pulled away from the classroom and into leadership, most likely due to the aforementioned ways teachers attempt to advance and move through the field of education.
Clearly, there is very little formal growth inherent or possible within teaching, which I believe impacts the retention of a highly skilled and diverse educational workforce. Bringing my perspective as a young professional to a high school, I have been endlessly frustrated with the disparity between what I want and am inspired to accomplish and what the system allows me to reasonably get out of any effort I put in.
Feeling Stuck
Another thing I’ve found difficult about this issue is that simply being a teacher doesn’t really say much about your job description; it doesn’t give any information about your particular working conditions, responsibilities, expectations or compensation because these vary so much from school to school, not to mention across the country.
Though I’ve only worked at one school, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with math and science teachers nationwide. From the poorest rural schools to the most elite boarding schools, I have become increasingly vexed by the lack of incentive structure or clear avenues of professional growth within the teaching profession that I could verbalize in a meaningful way in a resume or cover letter.
Other fields offer structured opportunities for career growth in several ways, including but not limited to some sort of organizational hierarchy in which promotions lead to increased compensation and different responsibilities. While this sort of promoting-from-within and workforce investment and development is not the case for every corporation or industry, in the teaching career, it is practically nonexistent.
Public school teachers are often limited geographically by pensions, so moving across state lines means forfeiting your hard-earned retirement benefits. In some states, there are required portfolios or observations teachers must complete to receive tenure, but pay bumps are not always a guarantee. Once you have taught for a certain number of years, eager teachers can work incredibly hard for at least a full year to receive National Boards Certification, but first, they have to pass the test — and, yet again, the reward may differ by state. California has a stipend for those who achieve this distinction but not an actual raise; in many states, it is a purely symbolic title with no financial compensation.
Meanwhile, in my previous job industry, many of my colleagues were able to seek out a more supportive environment where they could be competitively compensated and grow in their careers. Clearly, not all companies or other jobs have these opportunities, but even the ability to switch employers for upward career mobility is complicated for teachers. All of these hidden factors baked into the decentralized educational system can prevent teachers from the same level of fluid movement between schools and districts that their similarly educated peers in professional industries are used to. Ultimately, this hinders educators' ability to navigate an employment landscape in a way that promotes their overall career growth and professional development.
Putting Your Money Where Your Labor Is
Many industries operate on the basic principles of rewarding talent for positive, sustained performance. In the many fractured systems that make up the overall U.S. education system, talent and effort often only lead to heartwarming notes, the occasional staff pizza party and more responsibilities with an ever-shrinking margin of effective compensation. With the lack of growth opportunities in this career, is it any wonder that recruiting and maintaining a diverse teaching workforce is an issue for our schools today?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to addressing this issue. Districts and schools, whether public, private or charter, are all funded differently and have different methods for allocating their budgets. But in considering how to fix schools or taking stock of the current state and future of public education in the US, policymakers and stakeholders with any ability to make a change in their schools or districts should not discount the effect of developing a stronger route of professional advancement for teachers.
If we don't build a better system, one that rewards extra labor and additional roles that come with being a teacher, we risk further creating the feeling that being a teacher feels like a dead-end job, and while some educators have come to this conclusion and left the field, I hope myself and other colleagues can feel the growth and necessary support we need in our careers to stay in the classroom.
Those were the words out of Dr. Richard DuFour’s mouth more than a decade ago as I was excitedly and passionately explaining how my district was going about our work.
DuFour and Dr. Robert Eaker are the two co-founders of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) at Work movement. Needless to say, I was taken aback, disappointed and a bit hurt.
And yet, he was right.
Approaching Professional Learning Communities — In Theory
Year One: What do we want students to know and be able to do?
We weren’t getting to action fast enough. We were taking too much time planning — too much time in the realm of theory instead of practice and too much time not directly impacting student learning through implementing all four critical questions of a professional learning community.
We had forms and processes to ensure that, over the course of the year, every teacher identified eight to 10 essentials per course, per semester. This meant teams would also have to come to a common understanding of what those essentials meant, when they would be taught and what resources they would be using to teach them.
Year Two: How will we know when they know or can do it?
We dubbed our summer training “PLC Q2 Boot Camp,” and the focus for the year was to develop high-quality end-of-unit or formative common assessments. Length didn’t matter, nor did assessment type. Student results on any of those assessments didn’t matter either. The emphasis was on simply creating assessments where the targets and evidence matched each other.
Then, after two years of work, we finally arrived at Critical Questions 3 and 4: “What will we do when students don’t know or can’t do it?” and “What will we do when students do know it or can do it?” Two full years later, with hours and hours of training and team meetings, the district began helping teams adjust their instructional practices.
DuFour quickly identified the problem with our plan: We weren’t getting to action fast enough. We were taking too much time planning — too much time in the realm of theory instead of practice and too much time not directly impacting student learning through implementing all four critical questions of a professional learning community.
While ultimately, the work we did led to significant improvements in student learning — five of seven school buildings were identified as Model PLC at Work schools — the results could have come faster, positively influencing even more students. The process would likely have gained momentum more quickly than what we experienced.
Moving Quickly to Action in a Professional Learning Community
What was DuFour’s alternative? Recurring cycles of inquiry and action research.
This means that educators should work on all four critical questions within the span of a single unit and that this cycle should repeat itself four or five times during the course of a single year.
As a fun example, in one district I was working with recently, the team was hesitant to jump into the work. You may be familiar with some of the common refrains: “Everything we teach is essential for students to know” and “We are dumbing down the curriculum if we eliminate content for students” were just a couple.
Despite their hesitation, they agreed to clarify what students truly needed to learn in their next unit, what was important for students to learn in that same unit, and what was nice to know in that upcoming unit.
To be clear, we focused only on the next unit and not an entire year’s study. The standard they were focused on had to do with students evaluating the impact of the people, places, events and symbols of the Greeks, Romans, Turks, Russians, etc. As you can imagine, there was no shortage of content embedded in that one standard, and as we all subconsciously know and unfortunately don’t frequently acknowledge out loud, there was — and often is in any single unit — far too much content for students to master everything. So we started with one civilization and tried to narrow down the specific people, places, events, and symbols that students needed to learn, those that were important to teach, and those that were nice to know.
What's taught versus what's learned: The most important differences
The result was a chart like below. It was, of course, filled in with the content the teachers would teach. The difference between this practice and past practices, however, was that the need row was what the team was committing to ensuring that students learn. Everything else was not considered essential and, therefore, would be taught but not guaranteed. In other words, a chart like this distinguishes the difference between what was going to be taught and what was going to be learned.
Turning a Professional Learning Community Around to Try Again
Need help turning your professional learning community efforts around? Check out these resources to learn more about repairing or improving your PLC:
Just six weeks later, I returned to work with the team. The results of that one activity from September? A reduction in the failure rate on their end-of-unit exam from a typical 15 to 20 students to just two. Quite frankly, all they did was clarify the targets students needed to learn. From there, they created some graphic organizers to help kids with that content.
The team stated that not only did fewer kids fail, but the understanding of the need-to-know targets was much greater than before. As a bonus, students were actually interested in the important and nice content and made more connections to the need-to-know content than in previous years. It was a total transformation in only a handful of weeks, not years.
Lesson Learned: Getting Better at the Four Questions
DuFour was right, of course. Spending years getting ready to improve our practice without doing something about our work right now doesn’t work. For one, it’s a disservice to our students today. For another, it doesn’t generate momentum. If you’re considering the four critical questions regarding yearlong processes, take DuFour’s advice: “Don’t do that.”
Instead, ensure quick improvement cycles because it only takes a few weeks to see dramatic results and generate momentum for improvement. Move quickly to action.
The CHIPS America Act was a response to a worsening shortfall in engineers equipped to meet the growing demand for advanced electronic devices. That need persists. In its 2023 policy report,
Chipping Away: Assessing and Addressing the Labor Market Gap Facing the U.S. Semiconductor Industry, the Semiconductor Industry Association forecast a demand for 69,000 microelectronic and semiconductor engineers between 2023 and 2030—including 28,900 new positions created by industry expansion and 40,100 openings to replace engineers who retire or leave the field.
This number does
not include another 34,500 computer scientists (13,200 new jobs, 21,300 replacements), nor does it count jobs in other industries that require advanced or custom-designed semiconductors for controls, automation, communication, product design, and the emerging systems-of-systems technology ecosystem.
Purdue University is taking charge, leading semiconductor technology and workforce development in the U.S. As early as Spring 2022, Purdue University became the first top engineering school to offer an online
Master’s Degree in Microelectronics and Semiconductors.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked the university’s graduate engineering program among America’s 10 best every year since 2012 (and among the top 4 since 2022)
“The degree was developed as part of Purdue’s overall semiconductor degrees program,” says Purdue Prof. Vijay Raghunathan, one of the architects of the semiconductor program. “It was what I would describe as the nation’s most ambitious semiconductor workforce development effort.”
Prof. Vijay Raghunathan, one of the architects of the online Master’s Degree in Microelectronics and Semiconductors at Purdue.Purdue University
Purdue built and announced its bold high-technology online program while the U.S. Congress was still debating the $53 billion “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act” (CHIPS America Act), which would be passed in July 2022 and signed into law in August.
Today, the online Master’s in Microelectronics and Semiconductors is well underway. Students learn leading-edge equipment and software and prepare to meet the challenges they will face in a rejuvenated, and critical, U.S. semiconductor industry.
Is the drive for semiconductor education succeeding?
“I think we have conclusively established that the answer is a resounding ‘Yes,’” says Raghunathan. Like understanding big data, or being able to program, “the ability to understand how semiconductors and semiconductor-based systems work, even at a rudimentary level, is something that everybody should know. Virtually any product you design or make is going to have chips inside it. You need to understand how they work, what the significance is, and what the risks are.”
Earning a Master’s in Microelectronics and Semiconductors
Students pursuing the Master’s Degree in Microelectronics and Semiconductors will take courses in circuit design, devices and engineering, systems design, and supply chain management offered by several schools in the university, such as Purdue’s Mitch Daniels School of Business, the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the School of Materials Engineering, among others.
Professionals can also take one-credit-hour courses, which are intended to help students build “breadth at the edges,” a notion that grew out of feedback from employers: Tomorrow’s engineering leaders will need broad knowledge to connect with other specialties in the increasingly interdisciplinary world of artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things.
“This was something that we embarked on as an experiment 5 or 6 years ago,” says Raghunathan of the one-credit courses. “I think, in hindsight, that it’s turned out spectacularly.”
A researcher adjusts imaging equipment in a lab in Birck Nanotechnology Center, home to Purdue’s advanced research and development on semiconductors and other technology at the atomic scale.Rebecca Robiños/Purdue University
The Semiconductor Engineering Education Leader
Purdue, which opened its first classes in 1874, is today an acknowledged leader in engineering education.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked the university’s graduate engineering program among America’s 10 best every year since 2012 (and among the top 4 since 2022). And Purdue’s online graduate engineering program has ranked in the country’s top three since the publication started evaluating online grad programs in 2020. (Purdue has offered distance Master’s degrees since the 1980s. Back then, of course, course lectures were videotaped and mailed to students. With the growth of the web, “distance” became “online,” and the program has swelled.)
Thus, Microelectronics and Semiconductors Master’s Degree candidates can study online or on-campus. Both tracks take the same courses from the same instructors and earn the same degree. There are no footnotes, asterisks, or parentheses on the diploma to denote online or in-person study.
“If you look at our program, it will become clear why Purdue is increasingly considered America’s leading semiconductors university” —Prof. Vijay Raghunathan, Purdue University
Students take classes at their own pace, using an integrated suite of proven online-learning applications for attending lectures, submitting homework, taking tests, and communicating with faculty and one another. Texts may be purchased or downloaded from the school library. And there is frequent use of modeling and analytical tools like Matlab. In addition, Purdue is also the home of national the national design-computing resources
nanoHUB.org (with hundreds of modeling, simulation, teaching, and software-development tools) and its offspring, chipshub.org (specializing in tools for chip design and fabrication).
From R&D to Workforce and Economic Development
“If you look at our program, it will become clear why Purdue is increasingly considered America’s leading semiconductors university, because this is such a strategic priority
for the entire university, from our President all the way down,” Prof. Raghunathan sums up. “We have a task force that reports directly to the President, a task force focused only on semiconductors and microelectronics. On all aspects—R&D, the innovation pipeline, workforce development, economic development to bring companies to the state. We’re all in as far as chips are concerned.”
Companies large and small are seeking engineers with up-to-date, subject-specific knowledge in disciplines like computer engineering, automation, artificial intelligence, and circuit design. Mid-level engineers need to advance their skillsets to apply and integrate these technologies and be competitive.
As applications for new technologies continue to grow, demand for knowledgeable electrical and computer engineers is also on the rise. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job outlook for electrical and electronics engineers—as well as computer hardware engineers—is set to grow 5 percent through 2032. Electrical and computer engineers work in almost every industry. They design systems, work on power transmission and power supplies, run computers and communication systems, innovate chips for embedded and so much more.
To take advantage of this job growth and get more return-on-investment, engineers are advancing their knowledge by going back to school. The 2023 IEEE-USA Salary and Benefits Survey Report shows that engineers with focused master’s degrees (e.g., electrical and computer engineering, electrical engineering, or computer engineering) earned median salaries almost US $27,000 per year higher than their colleagues with bachelors’ degrees alone.
Purdue’s online MSECE program has been ranked in the top 3 of U.S. News and World Report’s Best Online Electrical Engineering Master’s Programs for five years running
Universities like Purdue University work with companies and professionals to provide upskilling opportunities via distance and online education. Purdue has offered a distance Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering (MSECE) since the 1980s. In its early years, the program’s course lectures were videotaped and mailed to students. Now, “distance” has transformed into “online,” and the program has grown with the web, expanding its size and scope. Today, the online MSECE has awarded master’s degrees to 190+ online students since the Fall 2021 semester.
“Purdue has a long-standing reputation of engineering excellence and Purdue engineers work worldwide in every company, including General Motors, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Texas Instruments, Apple, and Sandia National Laboratories among scores of others,” said Lynn Hegewald, the senior program manager for Purdue’s online MSECE. “Employers everywhere are very aware of Purdue graduates’ capabilities and the quality of the education they bring to the job.”
Today, the online MSECE program continues to select from among the world’s best professionals and gives them an affordable, award-winning education. The program has been ranked in the top 3 of U.S. News and World Report’s Best Online Electrical Engineering Master’s Programs for five years running (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024).
The online MSECE offers high-quality research and technical skills, high-level analytical thinking and problem-solving skills, and new ideas to help innovate—all highly sought-after, according to one of the few studies to systematically inventory what engineering employers want (information corroborated on occupational guidance websites like O-Net and the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Remote students get the same education as on-campus students and become part of the same alumni network.
“Our online MSECE program offers the same exceptional quality as our on-campus offerings to students around the country and the globe,” says Prof. Milind Kulkarni, Michael and Katherine Birck Head of the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Online students take the same classes, with the same professors, as on-campus students; they work on the same assignments and even collaborate on group projects.
“Our online MSECE program offers the same exceptional quality as our on-campus offerings to students around the country and the globe” —Prof. Milind Kulkarni, Purdue University
“We’re very proud,” he adds, “that we’re able to make a ‘full-strength’ Purdue ECE degree available to so many people, whether they’re working full-time across the country, live abroad, or serve in the military. And the results bear this out: graduates of our program land jobs at top global companies, move on to new roles and responsibilities at their current organizations, or even continue to pursue graduate education at top PhD programs.”
Variety and Quality in Purdue’s MSECE
As they study for their MSECE degrees, online students can select from among a hundred graduate-level courses in their primary areas of interest, including innovative one-credit-hour courses that extend the students’ knowledge. New courses and new areas of interest are always in the pipeline.
Purdue MSECE Area of Interest and Course Options
Automatic Control
Communications, Networking, Signal and Image Processing
Computer Engineering
Fields and Optics
Microelectronics and Nanotechnology
Power and Energy Systems
VLSI and Circuit Design
Semiconductors
Data Mining
Quantum Computing
IoT
Big Data
Heather Woods, a process engineer at Texas Instruments, was one of the first students to enroll and chose the microelectronics and nanotechnology focus area. She offers this advice: “Take advantage of the one credit-hour classes! They let you finish your degree faster while not taking six credit hours every semester.”
Completing an online MSECE from Purdue University also teaches students professional skills that employers value like motivation, efficient time-management, high-level analysis and problem-solving, and the ability to learn quickly and write effectively.
“Having an MSECE shows I have the dedication and knowledge to be able to solve problems in engineering,” said program alumnus Benjamin Francis, now an engineering manager at AkzoNobel. “As I continue in my career, this gives me an advantage over other engineers both in terms of professional advancement opportunity and a technical base to pull information from to face new challenges.”
Finding Tuition Assistance
Working engineers contemplating graduate school should contact their human resources departments and find out what their tuition-assistance options are. Does your company offer tuition assistance? What courses of study do they cover? Do they cap reimbursements by course, semester, etc.? Does your employer pay tuition directly, or will you pay out-of-pocket and apply for reimbursement?
Prospective U.S. students who are veterans or children of veterans should also check with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to see if they qualify to for tuition or other assistance.
The MSECE Advantage
In sum, the online Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University does an extraordinary job giving students the tools they need to succeed in school and then in the workplace: developing the technical knowledge, the confidence, and the often-overlooked professional skills that will help them excel in their careers.
There are plenty of changes teachers say could help them do their jobs better, such as adequate planning time and support for their well-being.
Louisiana’s Department of Education decided to tackle some of these challenges by bringing together a group of teachers to recommend solutions — and they’re seeing change take shape.
The Let Teachers Teach workgroup released its list of recommendations in May, and their ideas span improvements for dealing with issues including professional development, student discipline and what one of the state’s top education leaders calls “the art of teaching.”
“To me, teaching is a pedagogical science, but it requires an artistic delivery,” Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley says. “Unfortunately, many teachers — due to bureaucracies or inadequacies of leadership — feel as if they're more of a robot than a professional.”
The 18 recommendations don’t mince words when describing the problems teachers face. Its section on training eschews “redundant professional learning sessions” in favor of strategies like individually tailored teacher growth plans and more time for better collaboration and planning.
One of the recommendations on discipline is titled “Trust us — don’t blame us,” calling for “excessively disruptive” students to be removed from the classroom and for “ungovernable students” to be assigned to attend alternative schools. This kind of “exclusionary discipline” practice has its critics, who argue it can be counterproductive and that it unfairly targets students who are racial minorities. However, post-pandemic, some teachers are looking for new solutions as they’ve struggled to manage what they call worsened student behaviors.
Brumley says that four recommendations became laws during the state’s spring legislative session. They include a law requiring disruptive students to be removed from class at a teacher’s request and prohibiting retaliation against the teacher.
Others will ban cellphone use in schools starting in the fall and require extra pay for teachers’ “non-academic” work, which Brumley says might include activities like working the concession stand at a school football game.
The legislature also tasked the Louisiana Department of Education and State Board of Education with devising a more effective plan for state-mandated training, Brumley explains. The Let Teachers Teach recommendations described these trainings as something teachers do “outside of the normal school day and without compensation.”
Brumley says he wanted the working group to come up with “real-world solutions to make the profession stronger while keeping in mind that student outcomes have to be paramount.” The concept was to address problems that teachers consistently told him hindered their ability to do their job.
“A very clear example is I will hear teachers say, ‘My school forces me to read a script,’” Brumley says. “We were very clear around that particular concept in the recommendations: Unless it is explicit, direct instructions or it's a novice teacher or a struggling teacher, effective teachers need the autonomy to deliver the content through the art of the profession and not simply reading from a script.”
While Brumley and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry have come out in strong support of the recommendations — they led a news conference announcing the document’s release — that’s not to say the education landscape there is without conflict.
Low earning potential has some Louisiana teachers wondering how much longer they can stay in the field, and the governor declined to back permanent pay raises. It’s also a place where culture wars are playing out, which teachers say are a mental strain — the governor is suing the federal government over expanded Title IX guidelines that protect transgender students from discrimination.
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