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The Impact of Effective Professional Development Experience for All

Troy Lange, Director of Alternative Licensure at the Colorado River BOCES

Remember when iPods emerged on the market? For me, it was a game-changer to be able to collect all my favorite music in one place. That’s how I feel about the “one-stop shopping” aspect of 2gnoMe. It literally improved my quality of life as an administrator. And now that I’ve been working with the 2gnoMe platform for a few years, I can see the impact it’s had on others as well. 

As the Director of Alternative Licensure for the Colorado River Board of Cooperative Education Services, I need to ensure our candidates have an effective professional development experience.  When our program began in 2015, we had a handful of candidates. Our licensing process was manageable with so few people, but it wasn’t scalable, and we needed to develop an infrastructure to support growth. Two years ago, we piloted with 2gnoMe focusing on Special Ed candidates, porting all learning into the 2gnoMe platform. 

We now have more than twenty times the number of candidates, and I can’t imagine going back to the old way of doing things. The old way meant too many systems and too many places to keep track of (schoology, google classroom, Iris center modules, etc). To work with my candidates, I had to maintain regular videoconferences, pulling up 4 or 5 different systems to see where each person was.

Using 2gnoMe now means easy access to a system that keeps track of how each individual is doing across the program. No more lengthy videoconferences trying to navigate too many sources. The self-serve aspect of 2gnoMe saves us all valuable time. But saving time is just one aspect of its effectiveness. Building the program around 2gnoMe as a framework, we can now demonstrate artifactual and observational evidence to help teachers see where they are in competition with each other and within their own growth. 

With 2gnoMe, educators have a better awareness of their learning and know exactly where they are in program completion. This awareness is invaluable to my candidates and has given them more autonomy, which leads to more confidence. As well, by porting everything into the 2gnoMe platform educators are kept in alignment with Colorado’s Teacher Quality standards and understand what they’re being evaluated against. Previously, we had no way to track progress against TQS.

The evidence of impact is in how rapidly we were able to get teachers through the program while increasing their skills competence. There is currently a great need to fill vacancies, but it’s important to have competent teachers. And as alternative licensure pathways are usurping traditional preparation programs in terms of numbers, I have witnessed 2gnoMe as the more effective, best-case scenario for meeting everyone’s needs. 

For teachers, this means professional development that improves not just knowledge, but self-awareness, competence, and confidence. For administrators like myself, it’s less about what’s learned and more about efficiently keeping track of information in a program that is accessible and personalized. In the past, teachers used to comment on the sheer number of sources they had to navigate. Now, they no longer bring up the platform, which speaks to its impact. 2gnoMe is invisible, and teachers don’t need to understand its complexity to get its value. To them, it’s a way to access their information and an acknowledgment of their growth. As adults, our growth is our responsibility, and 2gnoMe allows them to take that responsibility.

In my position, and in my opinion, it would be foolish of me not to use it. Like that first iPod, 2gnoMe is a game-changer because it allows personalization, it’s affordable, and it works.


November 22, 2022