Representatives of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest’s former Virtual Education Research Alliance (VERA) recently contributed two articles to an Education Week blog series on research-practice partnerships. Former VERA co-lead Peggy Clements and members Dawn Nordine and Michele Nickels, executive director and director, respectively, of Wisconsin Virtual School (WVS), wrote about a study that the alliance conducted in the 2012–2017 REL Midwest contract that considered the experiences of online teachers. This study resulted in the report titled Professional Experiences of Online Teachers in Wisconsin: Results From a Survey About Training and Challenges.

In the first article, Clements wrote from a researcher’s perspective on the collaborative process undertaken by the alliance to create a survey that would reveal meaningful insights. The second article, written by Nordine and Nickels, takes a deeper dive into the survey findings and shares how the outcomes of the survey informed the professional development that WVS offers to its online teachers. Together, these articles illustrate how a research-practice partnership can lead to actionable findings that help educators and students.

Want to learn more about this example of the collaborative research process in action? Visit the Education Week website to read the full articles:

• Learning About Training Needs of Online Teachers (Peggy Clements)
• What Do Online Teachers Need to Succeed? (Dawn Nordine and Michele Nickels)