Training non-IT teachers to advise and facilitate inquiry-based learning in IT: A pilot study

As the IT-Adventures program was being developed, we discovered teachers of all disciplines needed a way to improve their knowledge and skills in IT to facilitate student learning as part of their school´s IT-Club. The IT-Adventures program is built around the formation of an IT-Club at a local high school where students are given learning materials and then conduct their own inquiry-based learning in three content areas: cyber defense, game design programming and robotics. An IT-Advisor, a teacher who sponsors each local high school IT-Club, helps students in exploring the learning materials and finding solutions to the challenges they are presented. The large, non-IT base of teachers who serve as IT-Advisors caused us to offer a free, for-credit class for those individuals working with the IT-Clubs. This paper is a report on the success of a pilot project of teacher educational programming conducted as part of the IT-Adventures´ inaugural year (the 2007-2008 academic year). It covers how the IT-Adventures program works, the IT-Advisor role, the details of the teacher course and the lessons learned from the pilot project. It also briefly discusses how the teacher course has been modified through feedback and experience for the 2008-2009 academic year.