Collaborative Teaching
14-Week Prep > Collaborative Teaching
At Algonquin College, collaborative teaching involves one teacher teaching the first 7 weeks of a course and another teacher teaching the second 7 weeks.
Collaborative teaching can be a rewarding experience. However, it is a collaboration that requires planning and flexibility.
Teaching teams should allocated time for planning before the course begins. At a minimum, faculty are expected to meet twice to plan:
1) the start of the semester
2) the mid-term of a semester to ensure a smooth transition between teachers
Discussions during this meetings should cover the following topics.
Philosophy of Teaching and Learning
One challenge of collaborative teaching is that your teaching style and philosophy may differ from the peer with whom you are teaching. Teaching effectively as a team is more dependent on having an open mind and a willingness to compromise than it is on following a specific philosophy. If your partner has a different view of teaching and learning than you do, be sure to discuss this. Consider it an opportunity to widen your practice to incorporate different styles into your teaching.
Additional Resources
Teaching Philosophy: Preparing a Statement
Communication Strategy
Having a consistent communication strategy – with students and with each other as team mates – is essential. Creating a communication strategy for planning and collaborating on documents can be very helpful. For example, you may want to use shared MS Word documents using Office 365 – which you can access by logging into MS Outlook online via your Algonquin username and password.
Log in at: https://liveac.algonquincollege.com
Students also have access to the same Outlook 365 resources.
Be consistent in your use of Brightspace features including Announcements, Assignments, Content, and Grades.
For “how-to” information about using Brightspace features, visit: https://www.algonquincollege.com/brightspace/training/
Planning Course Instruction
Making decisions as a team before the course starts is the key to a strong partnership; however, it is often an adjustment when you are used to teaching alone. There are many choices to make before the course even begins, and both co-teachers should be involved in the planning process.
A good starting place may be to review the course learning requirements, and discuss how they will be taught, reinforced, and assessed. Some points of discussion may include:
- What topics will be included in the course, and how do these align with the course learning requirements of the course?
- What types of active learning strategies have you used, and how do these course learning requirements ?
- How do you provide opportunities for students to practice skills necessary to perform well on assessments?
- How much work do you expect students to do during class time? Out of class?
Additional Resources
Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education
provides a good orientation into key considerations for post-secondary teaching.
Adapted from resources provided by the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Georgian College.
First Class
While co-teachers are not expected to agree on everything, it is important to present a united front to students from day one in order to mitigate potential issues. It is not uncommon for students to pit one teacher against another; for example, students may say “teacher A said I could do XYZ” when that actually was not the case. In addition to collaborating on the weekly course schedule, having both teachers present on the first day of class demonstrates to students that you are both equally involved in the course delivery.
The first day of class can be stressful for students and faculty alike. Students may be anxious when meeting one teacher let alone two and concerned about having two teachers providing the instruction and assessment. The goals are to clearly communicate the course plan across the semester and to have students come away with the impression that the course is off to a good start.
Script for First Class Team Teaching
Assessment and Evaluation
Co-teachers should make every effort to be consistent with student assessment. They should work together to create an evaluation plan that reflects balance and equity. While it may not always be possible to have 50% of course work complete by mid-semester, consideration should be given to approaching 50% where possible. Whatever decisions that are made by co-teachers, ensure that expectations are clearly communicated to students.
Here are some points of discussion for you and your co-teacher:
- What types of assessment do you consider important?
- Do these align with the learning outcomes in the course?
- How many assessments will be used in the course?
- How will students submit assessments (Brightspace Assignments, hard copies, etc.)?
- What will our policy be for submitting assignments late or allowing extensions?
- How will assignments/tests be evaluated (i.e. can you use common rubrics for consistency)?
This will likely be the area of collaborative teaching most likely to lead to student frustration if co-teachers are very far apart in their approaches. Calibration is a process that helps faculty develop a shared understanding and consistency with assessments. While faculty will have some differences in approach, a common understanding of the course learning requirements and assessment activities will enable faculty to evaluate student work in a more consistent manner, thus reducing student anxiety and uncertainty. Research has shown that the use of calibration among faculty significantly improves scoring accuracy and consistency (Cash, Hamre, Pianta, & Myers, 2012; Ricker-Pedley, 2011).
Calibration exercises can simply be a sample evaluation/assessment whereby faculty discuss how they would evaluate the work. For example, faculty can discuss how they may award marks from a rubric-scoring matrix. Complex calibration activities could involve watching and scoring standardized videos then comparing and discussing the results.
Ultimately, it is important for faculty to discuss expectations around evaluation during the planning stages.