I am coming to the end of my first ever professional development (Empowered Digital Leaders with @AdamHillEDU and @JCasaTodd) that has combined synchronous and asynchronous learning for a sustained period of time. As I was learning new and relevant content, I found myself thinking about the quality of the course leaders and the structure of learning. Learning about and through social media, I decided to articulate big ideas of what made this experience so successful.

Knowledgeable, passionate, responsive, collaborative and committed educators inspire a culture of learning, curiosity and reflection.

Connecting to and showing empathy for the personal contexts, opportunities and challenges of others forges strong, trustful relationships.

Strategically-sequenced asynchronous and synchronous learning offers opportunities for a broad scope and conceptually-rich set of personalised learning opportunities to learn about and learn through big ideas.

Deliberately-provocative and clear engagements, thoughtful questions and honest insights encourage different perspectives to be unpacked and voiced.

Access to innovative, recent and relevant resources and exemplars facilitates easier application, encourages deeper metacognition and triggers changes in practice.

Balancing time between creating, responding to and curating resources facilitates upskilling, scaffolds growth and showcases potential.

A focus on conceptual learning engages deeper thinking than acquiring a new set of skills and tools alone.

A shift from showcasing what you and others understand about theory to curating meaningful stories of significant learning in the classroom demonstrates a deeper understanding of pedagogy.

Ongoing and careful monitoring of learning opens up dialogue, deepens thinking and avoids false assumptions through feedback.

This set of ideas are grounded in high expectations, yet evidenced by Jennifer and Adam, the leaders of this course. They give me a set of criteria to aspire to as I lead my own workshops and focus on different aspects to set goals for myself. I pride myself in the workshops I give, but this reflective process forced me to identify specifics about what "good" looks like. What criteria do you use to evaluate how effective professional development is?