We are fortunate to have an active community of parents and childcare providers who are committed to preparing children for school and reading. However, many caregivers feel unsure of early literacy techniques and best practices for school readiness. We previously created in-house classes to fulfill this need and those classes were met with great interest. However, many working parents and childcare providers cited time constraints and other barriers to physically visiting the library at a specific time as the top reasons they could not attend. Because of this challenge, our classes were reaching a total of 30 to 40 students each year. Our goal was to re-design our courses in a webinar format that can accommodate up to 500 students each year without sacrificing quality.

Our challenge as early literacy experts was to design an online course that could be available any time, and still provide students with an engaging and interactive learning experience. Students answer discussion questions via email and those answers are posted to the course for others to see. Students answer quiz questions in the webinar on course content and handouts are available. One month after course completion, the student will receive an outcome measures survey. Students earn continuing education credit. To further develop a community of learners, the library is planning a resource sharing at the library for course participants.

Our intended outcome is to empower childcare teachers and parents with the knowledge and tools to prepare young children for success in school. We planned a full publicity campaign and will contact area childcare providers. We anticipate requests for more online courses on different subjects. Our next webinar series will focus on providing STEM instruction for young children and elementary students. The most challenging lesson our staff has learned is how to prepare and provide quality instruction to students both in person and online. Staff also learned additional skills in public speaking and vocal recording. Once the classes are live, we will learn what, if any, technical difficulties students experience and will know how to correct these issues in the future courses.