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Online teacher preparation used to be talked about in the same breath as 鈥渄iploma mills鈥� that grant r茅sum茅-inflating but worthless paper degrees.

Not anymore. As more teacher-candidates and career-changers seek flexible hours, the number of traditional teachers鈥� colleges offering distance-learning courses and even full degree programs that can be earned online has grown by leaps and bounds. A handful of other schools of education operate totally online.

The advancements such programs are making in training teachers promise to shape the future of educator preparation, experts who study online learning say. For one, says Susan D. Patrick, the president and chief executive officer of the , or iNACOL, online schools of education are extending the reach of the academy far beyond the local communities most brick-and-mortar education schools were founded to serve.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a little like our first landing on the moon,鈥� says Patrick. 鈥淭hese schools are expanding opportunities for students all over the country, and increasingly all over the world.鈥�

There are some key differences between brick-and-mortar schools of education that offer some distance-learning options and those that operate totally online. Education schools that operate only online, such as Walden University, with headquarters in Minneapolis, typically don鈥檛 have their own faculty. Instead, they use instructors from other institutions as adjuncts鈥攁n advantage in that they can reach out to top talent in the field.

It can also create some challenges, says Mary Beth Nowinski, the senior director for policy, programs, and professional issues at the Washington-based . Without a common faculty, it can be more challenging to observe candidates鈥� teaching and identify those that need special attention. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want students going into classrooms who don鈥檛 have the disposition to work with children,鈥� Nowinski says.

Still, say proponents, these programs鈥� contribution to the field may lie in their ability to rethink long-standing features of teacher education.

In January 2008, received the go-ahead from the state of Minnesota to offer licensure routes in the specific fields of early-childhood education and special education. The university, which had previously granted graduate degrees in education, faced the challenge of how to provide teacher-candidates with the state-required clinical field experience.

Its solution was not to dramatically change the concept of fieldwork, but to augment it: Candidates complete a capstone, 14-week field experience in their local school districts. University officials work with each student鈥檚 district to set up a structure for overseeing his or her student-teaching.

The school鈥檚 online-learning technologies enhance those field experiences, according to Richard L. Simms, the associate dean of licensure and undergraduate programs at Walden. When teachers return to the university鈥檚 online platform after a day of student-teaching, they can compare successes and setbacks with the other candidates in their cohort across different types of schools and settings.

鈥淥ur candidates come from an array of backgrounds, experiences, and geographic areas,鈥� Simms says. 鈥淲e reach out to provide the learning that may not have been available to them.鈥�

The university supplements its coursework with 25 鈥渧irtual鈥� field experiences, which consist of recorded video clips of interactions between teachers and their pupils in diverse classrooms鈥攕uch as ones in high-poverty urban schools or schools with a lot of English-language learners鈥攖hat aren鈥檛 necessarily available in every candidate鈥檚 community

Creating Competencies

, whose offices are located in Salt Lake City, employs a new method for ensuring that online students pursuing education degrees are fully prepared to be successful in classrooms. The school assesses student competencies in a set of knowledge and skills to determine when a candidate has met its graduation standards, rather than requiring a fixed course sequence.

The assessments, which consist of both multiple-choice and performance-based tasks, are aligned with a set of competencies, which are themselves based on state and national curriculum standards. Each student is given an individual academic plan listing the assessments he or she must pass. Students are directed to learning resources, such as labs and texts, and enrolled in an online learning community of other students preparing for the same assessment. A faculty member facilitates interactions in each community, while a mentor tracks the candidate鈥檚 progress.

The move to the self-guided, competency-based system was deliberate, says Philip A. Schmidt, the dean of the teachers鈥� college at WGU, which was founded by 19 governors of Western states in 1998. The teachers鈥� college opened in 2003.

鈥淲hat we鈥檝e experienced when teachers would enroll in online courses,鈥� says Schmidt, 鈥渋s that, by and large, the pedagogy they would encounter is the pedagogy they鈥檇 encounter in a university setting, except mounted online.鈥�

The system also allows teacher-candidates to interact with peers in different stages of their training, rather than with a single cohort of other novices. 鈥淲hat you find among students who are a little further along鈥攜ou can see the maturity in their responses. They become sort of peer assistants to the newer teachers,鈥� Schmidt says.

Improving Accountability

Online education schools are also adding new features to help develop accountability systems to ensure candidates go into classrooms prepared. The online platforms the schools use to connect faculty members and teacher-candidates double as a way to inform program improvement, Patrick of iNACOL says.

鈥淚n a learning-management system, you鈥檙e tracking all of the interactions, the discussions, the assignments, the e-mails鈥攁ll of those interactions,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou can have a paper trail in a face-to-face class, too, but online it鈥檚 organized so that the instructor and the administrators have real-time access to that data, and it鈥檚 much easier to track than having it locked up in a file cabinet.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a new model of transparency and accountability, having the data,鈥� Patrick argues.

With its first cohort of teacher-candidates, Walden University this January began piloting a computer-based system that allows the fieldwork administrator at each candidate鈥檚 school to record data on the student鈥檚 performance in the classroom. Then, the administrator can upload the data online and share it with the candidate and Walden faculty members, Simms says.

Such advances have not gone unnoticed by the , or NCATE, the national accrediting body for teachers鈥� colleges, which made the establishment of an assessment system for continuous program improvement one of its six standards for accreditation in 2001.

Western Governors鈥� University and its competency model, in essence, take the concept to its conclusion, and in 2006, its education school became the first online school to earn NCATE accreditation.

National accreditation has not only raised the school鈥檚 profile, but it鈥檚 also created a groundswell of interest in competency-based teacher education, both from online and brick-and-mortar institutions, Schmidt says.

鈥淎 week does not go by when someone doesn鈥檛 call me to talk about our approach to teacher education, how we got NCATE accreditation, and what we mean by competency-based education,鈥� he says. 鈥淗owever, it鈥檚 not the kind of thing that you can do lightly. If you decide to truly be competency-based, it鈥檚 an enormous endeavor.鈥�