Lessons Learned through Multi-Year Team Teaching of an Engineering Course for Pre-College Students

Abstract

Team teaching or co-teaching has been present in the K-12 systems for decades and has recently become more common in higher education. Team teaching has been proven effective in improving student's knowledge of the subject, increasing student satisfaction due to greater instructor support, and increasing positive perceptions associated with the course [1], [2]. Studies also suggest that team teaching can enhance instructors' professional development by providing a space to support the adoption of evidence-based strategies, transfer of methodologies and tools, critical self-reflection of teaching practices, adoption of improved pedagogy by new instructors, and learning of innovative teaching techniques by more established instructors [3], [4]. Although multi-lecturer courses bring these advantages to students and instructors, they can be difficult to plan, execute, and assess. Some of the challenges reported are consistent messaging, class housekeeping, overlapping roles, the dominance of one discipline, loss of individual autonomy, and poor logisticsThis paper discusses a team-taught engineering course for pre-college students. Over the past four years, a team of three to five graduate student instructors has worked to team teach a oneweek course. For many instructors, this experience is their first opportunity as a primary instructor. For all of the past instructors, this course was their first experience in team teaching. As such, one of the primary goals of this program is to teach instructors how to develop a unified course and team teach. The instructors meet bi-weekly the semester before the course to facilitate effective team teaching. Over time, many keys to success and additional goals and thoughts for future iterations have been determined. This paper details the instructor recruitment, team building, course development, delivery, and assessment strategies that have worked well for developing team-taught courses. Keys to success include (1) recruiting strategies focused on professional development opportunities for instructors, (2) defined roles and hierarchy, (3) creating a timeline for course development and following the schedule, (4) spending meetings finding common ground on large goals like course outcomes and objectives, (5) developing content separately, but in line with agreed course outcomes and objectives, and (6) developing a relationship characterized by mutual respect among instructors. Other items to be discussed include classroom management, choosing joint instructor versus separate instructor sessions, workload division, and developing a common assessment strategy. Although the instructor group, course deliverables, and students have varied over time, the instructor team has increasingly produced a cohesive course with students expressing interest in pursuing engineering studies.Tags: pre-college, team teaching, co-teaching, teaching in teams, collaborative teaching, civil engineering