(Version 1.0)
Jeanine Meyer
Pace University
One Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10038 USA meyer@pace.edu
Name:
Team teaching
Intent:
To work with another faculty member to offer a course.
Motivation:
A particular topical area may be too broad for one person to handle.
Time requirements may be too much. This can be a way to explore a new field.
Applicability:
One prime generic class of application for this pattern is the use of
technology, specifically multimedia, Web research, or Web production in a discipline such as
English literature and composition or education or marketing. Another generic class is when
one teacher handles the lecture/discussion for a subject and another handles the lab.
Structure:
The patterns that I am familiar with have well-defined roles for each
teacher. This relates to the key attribute of team teaching: the division of labor. A related
issue is are both teachers in the room at the same time? In the application of
technology to subject matter variant, I, the technology teacher and my "content" colleague are both in
the computer classroom. For the education classes, there is no other venue. For the
English and marketing courses, the class also uses a regular classroom for the
"regular" instruction and I am often absent. For the lecture teacher/lab teacher pattern, we
may visit each other but are not a constant presence. In all these cases, it is important that
the teachers and the students understand the roles and yet also understand that it is one
course, with the teachers conferring with each other regularly.
Consequences:
Team teaching does what is called "de-center" the classroom. The students
seem to take over more responsibility for the learning when they see teachers learning
from each other.
Students also observe teachers (adults) grappling with issues and
being truly involved in the subject matter. If there are problems with students, it is
wonderful to have someone to talk with about the problems.
With multimedia, the two teachers (and the rest of the class) constitute
a real audience for the student work. In the application of multimedia or any technologies
to a subject area, it is quite beneficial to show deference to the subject matter teacher.
This reinforces the message that "content" is more important the technical glitz.
Implementation:
For this topic, I will address the prosaic issue of compensation! See examples below. For
the Beowulf course, I receive 1 credit for my load and my colleague 3. Note that she does
give a full lecture to the class and has the major responsibility for grading. The other
courses were/will be split evenly.
Example Instances:
At Pace University, Dr. Martha Driver and I team-teach a course
giving 3 core literature credits and one credit cs/is elective called: Beowulf to Lear:
Text, Image and Hypertext.
Our web page is http://csis.pace.edu/grendel
Dr. Sandra Flank and I team teach a summer intensive 1-week course Introduction to
Multimedia for the Classroom.
I am taking over the technologist role and working with Dr. Karen Berger on Strategic
Web Marketing.