At 10:30 AM -0400 7/9/99, Monique Reed wrote:
>Hee hee hee. Finding any two profs who can work together that closely
>without argiung over whether to use slides/overhead/laptop, interrupting
>one another, backstabbing, or demonstrating duelling theories/egos?
>>MDR
>>> It seems to me that both of these problems might be solved, in part,
>> by "co-teaching" (as opposed to "'tag' team teaching") in which the
>> teachers are in front of the class together at least some of the
>> time. If the two faculty really wanted to do this, wrote and graded
>> exams together, and could be compensated appropriately with respect
>> to contact hours, I think the benefits to the students could be
>> tremendous.
>>>> Has anyone been able to pull this off?
>> What are the cons I'm not thinking of?
>>
A few years ago, one of our faculty members and I
did team-teach the Principles of Botany (for majors)
course. We both felt that a tag-team approach was
lousy and so we were both present at the lectures.
We agreed that we would NOT teach our specialties
but rather each-others'. Perhaps Dr. Colurso and
I are unusually compatible, but I thought it was
quite successful. She gave some of the finest plant
physiology lectures I have heard. While we did at
times speak in the same lecture, we kept that to
a minimum. We each wrote one of the exams independently,
and one of the exams we wrote cooperatively. I just
thought it worked out very well. Course evaluations
seemed to agree.
Since then, however, I have been too busy to teach the
intro course and so the whole concept has been dropped
by the department. Now that my terms in the chair are
over, maybe I can get to do it again. I would agree that
the two faculty members have to be compatible, but I
don't think that it is necessarily impossible to find
a pair. People who can show respect to others would be
your best choice for such an assignment. Faculty with
too much ego are easy to spot and are poor choices for
team teaching.
ross
________________________________________________________________
Ross Koning | koning at ecsu.ctstateu.edu
Biology Department | http://koning.ecsu.ctstateu.edu/
Eastern CT State University | phone: 860-465-5327
Willimantic, CT 06226 USA | fax: 860-465-4479
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