Education | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

Be The Spark: Institutional Recommendations For Open Educational Resources, Jenni Breems, Christopher Doll

Staff Work

It began with a conversation in 2018. How could a consortium of private academic libraries in Iowa promote the use of open educational resources (OER) at their institutions? We could see the potential. An OER is defined as “a teaching, learning, or research resource that is offered freely to users in at least one form and that either resides in the public domain or has been released under an open copyright license that allows for its free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with attribution” (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Citation2021). The Iowa Private Academic Libraries consortium (IPAL) has …

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Teachers' Perceptions Of Instructional Coaches, Melanie Sharp

Master of Education Program Theses

This action research project examined teachers' perceptions of instructional coaches at a public, rural school in central Iowa. Thirty teachers participated in a confidential survey which examined their coaching experiences, their perceptions about coaching barriers and strategies to overcome those barriers. After the surveys were analyzed, six of the teachers were invited to engage in a follow-up interview to further explore common themes. One notable difference between teachers was found in the perceived role and responsibilities of an instructional coach. Findings of the study suggest that a lack of school structure and norms can greatly impede the teachers’ perceptions of …

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