More information about the teacher-training study is available from Twin Cities Public Television.
A Web-based professional-development program prepared teachers as well as a traditional face-to-face program, a study concludes.
The study—conducted by Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn.—included 80 elementary school teachers and 1,500 elementary students across Minnesota. Students of teachers who had completed an online professional-development course about fractions made test-score gains that were similar to those of students taught by teachers who had taken the same course in person. Both groups of students performed better than a control group of students whose teachers had not received any training.