Going with the Flow: Shifting Face-to-Face PD to Fully Online in the Era of COVID-19

Immersive professional development is often used to provide teachers first-hand experience in developing placebased curricula. Knowing this, we had carefully crafted such a professional development for our participants to learn how to engage their students in local watershed research and ecology. However, following year one of a two-year grant-funded weeklong summer professional development opportunity for teachers in the Okefenokee Swamp, a shift to online instruction occurred due to COVID-19 related travel restrictions. Although the first summer in the swamp and the successive year of follow-up with teacher participants proved successful, the shift to online asynchronous instruction proved surprisingly successful as well. Qualitative and quantitative data compared across year one and year two indicated positive outcomes, such as a self-paced, engaging experience that required outdoor activities in participants’ local area.