Matthew Checrallah

With all the fluctuation in the world today regarding the COVID 19 Pandemic, remote teaching, and the rapid innovation, improvement, and adoption of educational technology in schools, more research needs to be conducted regarding teacher’s use and understanding of this technology. Last winter I had the opportunity to be the facilitator of an online learning course where educators had the chance to improve their knowledge with novel learning technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and 3D Printing and Modeling. The course was developed by Dr. Torrey Trust, in collaboration with a cohort of students in the Math, Science, and Learning Technologies graduate program at the University of Massachusetts. Based on the TPACK model developed by Koehler and Mishra (2009), which focuses on addressing three types of teacher knowledge (technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge), the course aimed to not only introduce teachers to new technologies, but also provided guidance with integrating these new technologies into the classroom setting. One year later, this study aims to analyze the participants who signed up for the online learning course, and develop learner “Personas” based on the needs and characteristics of the participants in alignment with Nielsen’s (2016) Personas theory.