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​Improving Pedagogy and Teacher Preparedness in the Synchronous Online

Cecilie Harrison

Department of Instructional Technology, Kennesaw State University

ITEC 7500: Capstone Experience & Portfolio

Professor Tracey L. Borup

January 18, 2023

​Improving Pedagogy and Teacher Preparedness in the Synchronous Online

The goal of the capstone project was to help educators at Georgia Connections

Academy improve their virtual pedagogy when using the synchronous online lesson

platform, Zoom. The need for this project presented itself when Georgia Connections

Academy adopted Zoom as their virtual lesson platform in 2021 after ten years of using the

Adobe Connect virtual conferencing platform for synchronous lessons. The school provided

training on how to use the Zoom platform, but this training largely focused on the operation

of the program itself, not on its pedagogical applications. Though it was unreliable and

forced teachers to employ “work arounds” to successfully use the platform, Adobe Connect

was a program that most teachers at Georgia Connections Academy had grown comfortable

with. Even though Zoom is much more reliable and user-friendly for students, surveys

distributed in the months following its adoption indicated that teachers did not feel

adequately prepared to teach using the new platform.

The focus of the capstone project was to integrate pedagogical best practices and

Zoom tools and strategies, and to present them to participating teachers through a

combination of a whole-group professional development course, and one-on-one coaching

techniques outlined by Jim Knight in his book The Impact Cycle. I planned to use a variety of

techniques to carry out the project, including surveys, individual and group coaching

sessions, and classroom observations. The end result of the capstone project is to show an

increase in the participating teachers’ level of comfort and ability to deliver effective

instruction using Zoom.

Description of Capstone Experience

The first activity for this capstone experience was to identify the key areas of need in

regard to using Zoom as a synchronous lesson platform. Needs assessments and surveys

given early in the year indicated that many teachers at Georgia Connections Academy did

not feel comfortable using Zoom to deliver lessons, and that they felt as though they had

lost some of their best teaching strategies when the old synchronous lesson platform was

replaced. Teachers wanted training on how to use the Zoom platform and its features, and

they wanted training on how to leverage those features to create high-quality, engaging

lessons for their students. They also wanted information on how to properly manage a class

in Zoom since the platform and its features worked so differently from what they were used

to.

Next, I asked for volunteers to assist with the capstone project and I selected three

teachers to participate. The first volunteer, Teacher 1, was an American government

teacher. She’d been a teacher for fourteen years, and six of those years were spent teaching

online. The next, Teacher 2, was a tenth grade literature teacher. She had been teaching for

over twenty five years, but this was her first time teaching online. The final volunteer,

Teacher 3, taught world history, and had been in education for thirteen years. This was her

first year teaching online as well.

The first task I asked my volunteers to complete was two self-assessments. The first

was to gauge how comfortable each of them was with using various tools and features

within Zoom, integrating other applications and tools with Zoom, and implementing a few

different instructional strategies in Zoom. I also asked each teacher to describe their

greatest challenge with Zoom and to identify a goal they would like to work on during the

capstone project. The second self-assessment asked teachers to select a recording of one of
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their lessons and to evaluate their own use of Zoom and instructional strategies during the

lesson. Since all teachers at Georgia Connections Academy record their live sessions so that

students can access and watch them later, it was easy for teachers to obtain video footage of

their lessons.

It was at this point that I encountered my first surprise while working with the

volunteers. I had anticipated that all of the teachers who volunteered would rate

themselves fairly low in all categories of proficiency on the self-assessment form. Of the

three volunteers, one rated herself at a two or three out of five in just about every category.

The next teacher rated herself at a three or a four in most categories. The final teacher rated

herself at a four or a five in all categories. Right away I realized that in order to meet each of

the teachers where they were I would have to change my planned approach of creating and

sharing the same resources with everyone and treating the capstone project almost as a

course that they would progress through together. Their identified student achievement

and engagement goals were also very different. Since each of the volunteers was starting

from completely different comfort and proficiency levels it became clear that each would

need a more individualized approach in order to reach their identified goals.

After analyzing and drawing conclusions from the self-assessment data, I moved on

to the lesson recordings each teacher had shared. With their Zoom goals in mind, I

observed each of their lessons and made notes about what went well, what could use work,

and what steps we might take to increase engagement or implement richer instructional

strategies. After making my own notes, I read the notes each teacher made about their

lesson using the evaluation tool I shared with them. Teacher 1, who was also the teacher

who rated her overall comfort and proficiency with Zoom the highest on her
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self-evaluation, indicated that she had a strong grasp on most of the features in Zoom, and

of how to use them to engage with her students. The one area in which she gave a low score

was the use of breakout rooms to encourage collaboration and differentiation. This,

incidentally, was the area of growth that she chose to focus on during our coaching sessions.

Her goal was to become comfortable enough with using breakout rooms to be able to try it

with a group of students and , hopefully, to encourage collaboration on a group work

assignment. Teacher 2 was similarly pleased and confident with her use of more basic tools

in Zoom, such as screen and audio sharing, waiting room usage, and chat controls. In her

lesson evaluation she indicated that she knew enough to survive from lesson to lesson, but

she wanted to learn how to use more advanced tools in Zoom to enhance her instruction.

Her goal was to learn how to competently use the whiteboard and annotation features in

Zoom to engage her students. Teacher 3 said in her self-assessment that she felt very

awkward and uncomfortable using different tools during her lessons, and this feeling of

uncertainty kept her from branching out, experimenting, and trying new things to engage

her students. She also wanted to learn how to use more advanced tools in Zoom, but she

wanted to bolster her confidence in managing her Zoom classroom using the basic tools as

well.

At this point I began scheduling individual coaching sessions with each teacher to

discuss their lesson evaluation and self-assessment, and to finalize their goals. To

accomplish this, I employed the “Identify” questions described in pages 82-96 in Jim

Knight’s The Impact Cycle (2018). Watching and evaluating their own lessons had given

each teacher a clearer picture of what their lessons were like, and where they wanted to

improve. Teacher 1 ultimately decided to focus on learning how to use Zoom breakout
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rooms, Teacher 2 chose to focus on using polls and annotation in Zoom to engage her

students without having to rely on any 3rd party programs that required some form of

student sign-on, and Teacher 3 also chose to focus on annotation. However, her goal was to

learn to use the tool so that she could implement it in conjunction with other technology

tools outside of Zoom to further engage her students. Since all three teachers had identified

instructional goals and technology tools/strategies to support those goals, I set to work on

the next part of the capstone project.

During a study of the use of synchronous communication in a virtual high school

course for seniors, researchers stated that one of the key skills of successful online teachers

is their ability to maximize affordances and minimize constraints of instructional and

communication tools. They also concluded that educators must have sufficient professional

development in order to adequately choose pedagogical activities, select tools to use with

synchronous lesson platforms, and manage student privileges and access to tools in the

online classroom. This professional development would also need to provide teachers with

the skills they need to make up for the limitations of the programs and tools at their

disposal (Murphy & Coffin, 2003). My goal in the next part of the capstone project was to

provide just such a professional development opportunity to the teachers who had

volunteered. I created and curated resources to explain the function and application of the

different tools each teacher had selected, and I scheduled our next coaching sessions.

During the next round of coaching sessions I presented the resources I compiled to

the volunteer teachers. We reviewed the checklists I created--each one detailed how to use

the Zoom tool selected by each teacher. This was an interactive process. We reviewed the

checklists line by line and determined if each implementation step would be feasible and
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appropriate for each individual teacher and group of students. After reviewing the

checklists and verbally explaining how to use and implement each tool, we took our

one-on-one sessions into Zoom so that teachers could practice using the tools they selected.

Using the checklists as a guide, the teachers and I took turns viewing the different tools as

both students and instructors. This portion of the coaching sessions seemed to be of

particular value to the volunteer teachers, backing up Murphy and Coffin’s conclusions. The

participating teachers joined my Zoom classroom as students to see what the breakout and

annotation tools would look like from a student point of view. This was particularly

useful--teachers were able to make notes and ask questions they were likely to hear from

students when they implemented the tools into their own classes. Being able to see what

their students would see allowed them to build the necessary experience to help their

students troubleshoot any issues, and to try to anticipate potential problems that may arise

due to the limitations of the Zoom tools and platform. For example, Teacher 1 realized that

some students might accidentally close the breakout room selection dialogue box without

choosing a breakout room. If those students did not know how to reopen the dialogue box it

could cause problems with getting students into their groups and starting their work in a

timely manner. She used our coaching session as an opportunity to take screenshots of the

steps to reopen the dialogue box, and used those screenshots to create a quick-reference

tutorial to share with any students who might struggle. We then switched roles so the

teachers could practice using the tools as they would in their lessons, and spent the

remainder of our coaching session with the teachers experimenting with different ways to

use their chosen Zoom tool. At the end of these second sessions each teacher reported
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feeling much more confident in their ability to use the tools they selected, and they each

had ideas for how they would implement the tools in their next synchronous lesson session.

Finally, it was time for the teachers to use the tools and strategies they chose in a

virtual lesson setting. Each teacher recorded their lessons and completed a reflection

stating how things went. Though each teacher felt confident in their ability to use the

specific Zoom tool or feature they’d selected, the outcome of each lesson was not

necessarily the desired one. Our next coaching sessions were spent reviewing what went

well, what didn’t go as planned, and what the next steps would be. Teacher 1 found that,

while she felt prepared going into her lesson, she found the application of breakout rooms

to facilitate group work to be lacking. Since Zoom does not allow teachers to monitor all

rooms at once, there was no way for her to ensure that each group was on task.

Technologically her lesson went well, but instructionally she felt that it was not very strong.

Only a few students felt comfortable using their microphones and sharing their screens to

participate in the activity, and that small handful of students was the only group that

completed work. The majority of students hung back and allowed others to lead the way.

Since Teacher 1 was not able to be in all places at once, she was not able to effectively

facilitate each group’s tasks. Using these observations, she and I were able to compile a list

of potential improvements to try. We discussed the possibility of inviting the other

government teachers to her Zoom room and ensuring there was at least one teacher in each

breakout room. We also discussed some ideas for increasing engagement and participation

amongst her students before introducing the idea of small group work. At the end of this

third session Teacher 1 indicated that, although the lesson did not go as well as she had
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hoped, she still felt comfortable enough using the breakout tool in Zoom to try it again

using some of the improvements we discussed.

Teacher 2 reported that her use of the annotation and poll tools was successful in

her lesson. After spending time practicing with each tool, and using our internal messaging

system to ask questions and receive additional resources to learn how to use them, Teacher

2 was able to engage her students in a lesson about writing a three point thesis statement.

Her goal for this lesson was not for students to use the tool, but rather for her to enhance

her own instruction using advanced annotations, and to check in with students using the

Zoom polling features. She did mention that at one point in her lesson she became a bit

flustered because she could not remember how to erase her annotations, but once she

found the eraser tool she was able to keep the lesson moving smoothly. During our

one-on-one session she expressed a desire to continue using the annotation tool with her

students, and to eventually teach them how to use it to participate more actively in her

lessons as well.

Teacher 3 was also successful in using the annotation tool to engage her students in

collaborative work in Zoom. She also reported a few moments during which she felt her use

of the tool faltered a bit, but she was able to figure out her mistake and keep the class

running smoothly. She also experienced some frustration with student participation. She

had a handful of students actively completing her activity, while the rest just watched. In

her reflection about the lesson she noted that some students connected to her Zoom from

their phones and were therefore unable to use annotation tools since they were not

available on mobile. She made a few notes about other improvements she would make next

time, and set to work planning a new activity to try. At the conclusion of each teacher’s third
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coaching session we scheduled our next check in and continued working through Knight’s

steps of the Impact Cycle to evaluate, practice, and improve each teacher’s pedagogical

skills using Zoom tools.

We continued the cycle of meeting to evaluate lesson plans and recordings, practice

using the identified tools in new ways, and brainstorm strategies to increase student

participation until mid to late April when state testing began. After that point it became

very difficult to find adequate time to meet, and shortly after that our synchronous lessons

for the semester ended. I asked each teacher to complete a final assessment of their current

level of skill/comfort/preparedness with using Zoom tools to implement high quality

instructional strategies. All participating teachers indicated that they felt more skilled and

confident using the Zoom tools they identified, and they felt they had made great strides

toward achieving the instructional goals they set at the start of the capstone. They each

stated they felt there was room for them to improve further, but each felt the goal of

improving their ability to use Zoom as an effective instructional tool had been met.

Implementation

The implementation of the project was, in the end, much different than I imagined

during the planning phase of the capstone. While the overall goal of the project--to increase

teacher comfort levels/preparedness with using Zoom to deliver high-quality lessons and

instructional strategies--did not change, the methods used to accomplish that goal were

quite different from my original plans. My initial timeline was very structured and

“one-size-fits-all” in nature. I imagined that all participating teachers would start from

relatively similar comfort levels, and that they would progress at generally the same rate

from “Zoom basics” to more advanced training on the use of 3rd party applications in
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conjunction with Zoom. This was not the case, and in hindsight I feel I should have

anticipated that more. To accommodate the different levels of readiness of each of the

participating teachers, as well as their individual goals for Zoom instruction, I adapted the

project to align even more closely with Jim Knight’s coaching methodology in The Impact

Cycle. Rather than adhering to the original timeline I proposed for the project, each of the

three participating teachers embarked on a personalized coaching experience during which

we evaluated the current state of their Zoom classrooms and technological knowledge,

identified personal goals and areas for improvement, discussed potential technology tools

and instructional strategies to help accomplish those goals, implemented those tools and

strategies, and then began the reflective process all over again. The focus became more

centered on each teacher’s specific goals for using Zoom, and less about the pre-planned

videos and activities I started with.

In my opinion, the deviation from the original plan yielded more impactful results

for the teachers participating in the capstone project. Rather than spending the bulk of my

time creating numerous videos and resources that I thought would be helpful, I dedicated

most of my time to meeting with the teachers, tracking their individual progress, compiling

resources and tools to address their specific needs, and helping them reflect on their

lessons and the strategies they used. This was a better use of my time and of theirs, since

the resources I spent time creating were tailored to the needs of the teachers, and therefore

they were actually implemented and perfected rather than left to gather dust in a resource

folder in Schoology.

Project Outcomes
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The outcomes of the project were positive across the board. I floundered a bit when I

realized that the original structure of my project would not be the most effective way to

implement, but once I accepted that and adjusted the process things went well. I did not

train all of the teachers on the same tools and programs, nor did I ask all teachers to utilize

breakout rooms as I had initially planned. Rather, each teacher stated a personal goal to

improve Zoom instruction, and I worked individually with them to determine the best way

to move toward their goal. Two of the teachers indicated that they wanted to focus on using

tools within Zoom itself to improve their instruction and provide more interactive lessons

for their students. Our one-on-one sessions focused on the tools embedded within Zoom

and how those could be combined with other programs (such as Google Slides or

PowerPoint) with which they were already comfortable. Both of these teachers were able to

successfully learn and implement the Zoom features they chose, and they continued to

modify their use of the tools to achieve their desired goals.

The third teacher wanted to increase student collaboration during her lessons, and

we decided to try this using breakout rooms in Zoom. We discovered after a few coaching

sessions and lesson attempts that Zoom breakouts simply are not a good fit for the

class/group of students the teacher was working with. The tool may be more effective in

the future if changes are made, but for now we concluded that breakouts do not provide

teachers with the level of control and observational presence needed to facilitate group

work. Though we determined that the selected tool was not effective for the goal chosen,

the teacher in question still reported a greater level of comfort using Zoom to deliver

instruction after the experience. Working with me to learn how to use breakouts in Zoom,

and then stepping outside of her comfort zone to implement them during her lessons
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helped her gain confidence in her virtual instruction. The outcome of her attempt at using

Zoom breakouts confirmed her hypothesis that Zoom does not at this time provide teachers

with the necessary environment to properly execute small group work. This knowledge

allowed her to reflect and then redirect her efforts to find other ways to foster collaboration

among her students without breaking them into small groups.

Barriers Encountered

I encountered a number of barriers when implementing the project. The most

prevalent were time limitations and scheduling, teacher inexperience with virtual

education, and the virtual format of the collaborative portions of the project. Of the

teachers who volunteered to participate in the project, two were new to our school and to

virtual teaching, while one was a veteran virtual educator. The veteran teacher is also a

member of the school’s teacher leadership team and has additional responsibilities relating

to that position. The other two teachers were juggling additional training and meeting

obligations because they are new to the school. My own teacher leadership and classroom

responsibilities also factored into time and scheduling constraints. Scheduling difficulties

caused me to reorganize my initial plan to have all participating teachers meet

collaboratively in a synchronous session. Instead, we used the Schoology platform to

engage in discussions and post ideas and questions about the tools and strategies we were

learning about.

As I mentioned before, two of the participating teachers were new to the virtual

teaching format of our school. Both were experienced educators, but their knowledge of

technology tools and strategies was not as developed as that of the third teacher. As a
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result, we spent more time during one-on-one sessions discussing programs and how to

use them rather than instructional strategies.

Ironically, the final significant barrier I encountered during the project was the

virtual format of our one-on-one meetings. There were multiple sessions that would have

been easier to facilitate in-person. This difficulty became especially apparent when the

participating teachers wanted to see the differences between the “teacher view” and

“student view” of Zoom. The screen share feature in Zoom did not allow teachers to see

everything that we needed to view to accomplish our goals, and I had to implement

extensive work-around measures to counteract this. In the future, planning collaborative

sessions during the school’s monthly in-person faculty meetings could help alleviate this

problem.

Follow-Up 

I communicated the trends and outcomes of the capstone project with the school’s

assistant principal during biweekly meetings throughout the implementation process. I also

discussed the information gained during this project with the school’s training specialist.

During these discussions the school’s training and professional development team

recognized a need to differentiate professional development workshops based on teacher

need and readiness levels. Many teachers at the school would benefit from workshops that

emphasize instructional applications of technology tools rather than operation of

technology tools themselves. However, there is a population of teachers at the school that

still need training in the basic functions of Zoom and other technology programs. The

capstone project helped reveal the need for both categories of training--implementing one
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without the other does not adequately prepare teachers to deliver high-quality lessons in a

virtual setting.

Additionally, the capstone project has prompted the training team to review the way

professional development is structured at Georgia Connections Academy. Current

implementation of professional development programs does not include well-developed

follow up sessions to allow teachers to attempt the strategies presented, reflect on them,

ask questions, and try again. The results of the capstone project suggest that adding these

follow-up components to professional development sessions will increase teachers’ level of

comfort with implementing technology tools and virtual teaching strategies.

Discussion and Reflection

One of the most important things I learned about technology facilitation through this

capstone experience was to trust the coaching process, and not to try to force it in any

particular direction. I began by stating a goal for technology facilitation--to improve

pedagogy and levels of preparedness to teach virtually for all of my participating teachers.

During my capstone proposal I outlined lists of indicators for achieving this goal, as well as

very specific steps for how I would achieve the stated goal (PSC 1.2/ISTE 1b). Upon

beginning the coaching process, however, I realized that my carefully planned “lessons” and

resources were not always what my teachers needed. I also found that the indicators for

success were going to be slightly different for each of my teachers as well. My own indicator

for success shifted as well--I began observing my teachers’ lessons to see if they were using

more technology tools in their lessons, paying attention to how comfortable they seemed

during their lessons, and I also listened to their own reports of how they perceived their
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lesson execution. This sort of reflection became a cornerstone of our coaching sessions. I

discovered that it was particularly helpful for me and for my participating teachers if both

of us viewed the lesson recordings and reflected on what went well and what needed more

polishing. Usually my participating teachers were more critical of their performance than I

was, so I took care to validate their practices and point out things that were improving. I

found that my teachers would usually tell me what instructional strategy they wanted to

implement, and that I could then access my own knowledge of instructional tools and

strategies to provide them with options for what would work well. This was helpful for

Teacher 3’s lesson planning and reflection in particular, since she was interested in

expanding her toolbox to incorporate third party programs she could use with Zoom. I was

able to show her how to use the Zoom annotation tool, and how to combine it with YouTube

videos, Google Slides presentations, and Nearpod to create more opportunities for her

students to engage with the content (PSC 3.6/ISTE 3f, PSC 3.3/ISTE 3c).

In my coaching sessions with Teacher 1, I was able to further develop my

understanding of a shared vision for technology use at the school, as well as what tools and

policies would help us achieve that vision. Truthfully, the school does not have an explicitly

stated vision for technology use for students or for teachers. Because of this, determining

the best uses for instructional technology can be challenging, and students will experience

different expectations for technology use with each of their teachers. Teacher 1 and I were

able to discuss her personal vision for technology use for her students, as well as her ideal

goals for her students in terms of collaboration and developing other 21st century skills

(PSC 1.1/ISTE 1a). I was able to introduce Teacher 1 to the ISTE Standards for Educators

and for Students, and this led us into very rich conversations about the ways that she could
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more effectively leverage technology in our environment. I was able to provide her with

descriptions and examples for the different technology standards created by ISTE, and I

was also able to share resources about the standards so that she could learn more about

them in her own time (PSC 2.1/ISTE 2a).

Teacher 2 allowed me to improve my ability to model the development of digital

tools and resources for her literature classes. She was not as comfortable learning how to

use outside platforms, but she expressed a desire to make her lessons more engaging for

her students. As things stood she felt they played too passive a role in her lessons, and she

wanted to change that. She showed me some of her lessons and I was able to make

recommendations for different teaching and questioning strategies that could help. Since

she was already comfortable with using PowerPoint with Zoom, we stuck with those tools,

and I suggested that she pair her PowerPoint presentations with opportunities for students

to use the Zoom annotation tools and chat to interact with each other and with the content.

I showed her how to create polling opportunities to use with Zoom annotations, sentence

diagramming activities, and more using a tool she was already familiar with. With only

slight changes to the instructional design of her course materials, she was able to

encourage more participation and engagement from her students (PSC 2.6/ISTE 2f, PSC

3.3/ISTE 3c).

Another way this capstone experience allowed me to develop the skills and

disposition that I will need as a technology facilitator was through the evaluation of my own

program/coaching sessions by the participating teachers. After each coaching session I

asked my teachers to complete an evaluation form so that I could receive constructive

feedback and make necessary changes. A good instructional coach needs to remain open to

learning new strategies, and if something I tried did not work with one or more of my

teachers, I knew to adjust my approach the next time we met (PSC 5, PSC 6).

One misconception that I discovered I was holding onto during the implementation

of my capstone related to my understanding of the TPACK framework and how teachers at

my school were leveraging it. The TPACK framework defines the intersections between

technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content knowledge. In order to

successfully implement technology in a classroom setting, it is important to ensure that the

tools and strategies employed are appropriate for the task at hand, and the TPACK

framework is a tool that can help educators measure that appropriateness (PowerSchool,

2022). Initially, I maintained the idea that the teachers I worked with needed to be trained

on technology and pedagogical strategies at relatively similar levels. Content knowledge

was not a concern because, while two of the participating teachers were new to virtual

education, all three of them were veterans in their content areas. I became concerned about

halfway through the semester because I realized I was spending most of my time training

teachers how to use different technology tools and Zoom features (focusing primarily on

technical knowledge), and comparatively little time focusing on pedagogical strategies. I

tried to make plans to remedy this, but I found that we tended to stray from those plans

during my one-on-one coaching sessions with teachers. After spending far too much time

worried I would not be able to show evidence that I developed my participating teachers’

pedagogical knowledge, I made a few key realizations. First, we were discussing

pedagogical strategies during our meetings. On the surface, yes, we were covering how to

use specific technical tools in our coaching sessions, but our conversations focused largely
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on how to implement those tools well once teachers had a strong enough grasp on how to

work them. Second, and most importantly, my teachers did not need me to zero in on

developing their pedagogical knowledge. I was working with three veteran teachers. Each

of them already possessed substantial knowledge of research-based pedagogical

techniques and strategies. They already knew what the best practices and strategies for

their content areas were. The primary function they needed from me was the technical

know-how and confidence to implement those best-practices virtually. We did not stay on

topic when I tried to lead by presenting pedagogical strategies because my teachers did not

need me to give them strategies. They needed me to show them how to apply what they

already knew to their virtual classrooms (PSC 3.7/ISTE 3g). This was an eye-opening

realization for me as a technology facilitator--some of my greatest resources in my role as a

coach are the very teachers that I am coaching.

Recommendations

Any teacher or instructional coach who may want to effect similar changes in a

particular school or district should start by working with school leaders to establish a clear

shared vision for technology use. While I do consider my capstone project a success

because my participating teachers reported improvements in the quality of their lessons,

levels of student engagement, and their confidence with teaching in Zoom, I think I would

have seen even more gains in teacher performance if the school had a clear shared vision

statement. A shared vision statement clarifies district or school goals for ideal technology

usage for both students and teachers, and having access to this information would make it

far easier for an instructional coach or technology facilitator to gauge how helpful their
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efforts are in achieving effective technology use. Additionally, I would highly recommend

Jim Knight’s coaching methodology described in his book The Impact Cycle. This was an

invaluable resource for me, and even though this was my first experience acting as an

instructional coach, it helped me feel very prepared and well-equipped to handle the

coaching sessions. If teachers or instructional coaches were to implement the methodology

detailed in The Impact Cycle, however, I would caution against creating any kind of rigidly

structured plans for progressing through different skills or goals for a group of teachers.

This coaching method is very individualized, and it works much better when you focus on

one teacher/classroom at a time, and let the teacher you work with set the pace and the

specific goals for improvement. In my case, the overall goal of the capstone was to increase

teachers’ self-reported levels of confidence or preparedness to teach using Zoom, and each

individual teacher had different needs and ideas to accomplish that goal.
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References

Knight, J. (2018). The impact cycle: What instructional coaches should do to foster powerful

improvements in teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, A Sage Company.

Murphy, E., & Coffin, G. (2003). Synchronous communication in a web-based Senior High

School Course: Maximizing affordances and minimizing constraints of the tool.

American Journal of Distance Education, 17(4), 235–246.

https://doi.org/10.1207/s15389286ajde1704_4

PowerSchool. (2022, April 20). The TPACK Framework explained (with classroom examples).

PowerSchool. Retrieved February 5, 2023, from

https://www.powerschool.com/blog/the-tpack-framework-explained-with-classroo

m-examples/