The online module Educational Technology and Action Learning in the Classroom was developed as part of a Masters course for Middle School Teachers in China.

In China, professional development of in-service teachers in the use of Educational Technology in the Classroom is one of the Chinese government’s educational reform measures.

However, the lack of professional development trainers in the university system has held back the achievement of this.

We therefore believed that there were two groups of target users in this Project:

• Staff at Beijing Normal University who are able to develop expertise in professional development of in-service teachers as a result of participating in this Project.

‘We were interested in finding out not only who the learners were but who we’d be working with, what their views on e-learning were and how they thought about constructing the courses. That seemed more important early on than who the students were, because they were people we would immediately have to work with, negotiate with and understand. (Sheffield team member).’

• The Middle School teachers studying the module.

Evaluation teams from the Universities of Bristol and Southampton visited China to carry out needs analysis interviews with in-service teachers and potential pilot participants. In addition, the Project team met visited schools in Beijing and met a number of in-service teachers. There were a number of needs identified as a result:

• How to link theory with practice (eg examples of how technology is used in the classroom).
• How to develop the online skills of participants, including language, online communication, time management and collaboration.
• How to provide effective online support.
• Effective access to technology for all participants.

To read an Extract from the WUN eChina Project Evaluation Report on needs analysis click the link to down load it as a PDF document (63Kb)