EXAMPLES OF COLLABORATIVE TEACHING



Dear Roanoke Faculty Member,

With so much attention currently being given to curriculum reform in a campus environment characterized by faculty members talking with each other—both within and across departments—this is a good time for interested Roanoke faculty to “think outside the box” and to develop proposals for innovative combinations of courses or connections among courses. As with many campus initiatives, your early brainstorming about possibilities shouldn’t be hampered by perceived obstacles to accomplishing your dream. My experience with a number of collaborative ventures and campus-wide initiatives has shown me that if the project is sound, many of those possible obstacles can be overcome or at least reduced in size.

It is true that integrative initiatives such as team teaching or learning communities challenge the traditional structures of college and universities—e. g., deeply ingrained structures such as individually-taught courses within fairly autonomous departments, knowledge separated by disciplines, and teaching loads defined by FTEs or TCUs. But more and more liberal arts colleges, in particular, are developing interdisciplinary programs, using a variety of approaches and structures. The FIPSE grant gives Roanoke faculty a chance to experiment with some different interdisciplinary approaches AND provides substantial and ongoing faculty development to support those experiments.

One suggestion to anyone considering developing a CTG proposal involving general education courses: It will be easier to enlist student enrollment in linked general education courses during students’ first semester at Roanoke. After that point, some students will have already taken certain general education courses, and getting sufficient enrollment of a student cohort group (students co-enrolled in two or more CTG-supported courses) could be more difficult, although certainly not impossible.

So let me or Adrienne or Paul know how we can help you.

Cordially,

Susan Kirby

Collaborative Teaching opportunities

at roanoke college

Spring 2007

Background

The Collaborative Teaching Grant program is one of three major initiatives outlined in the FIPSE grant proposal “Preparing Faculty for Creating Integrative Learning Experiences” (the others are annual faculty retreats and e-portfolios). This proposal states,

[…]designing an integrative curriculum is not enough. A curriculum that leads students to understand the actual complexity of the work world can only succeed in an environment where faculty interaction across disciplinary lines is deliberate and easily sustainable [….]

The proposal goes on to say that faculty development must “target[s] not only what we teach—the ‘dots’—but the connections between those dots.”

In addition, Roanoke College has developed a working definition of integrative learning that states the following:

A system of learning that deliberately makes connections between classes, fields, and academic and co-curricular life, with the end goal being the development of students who can encounter new challenges and new knowledge in a productive manner. [Emphasis added.]

Collaborative Teaching Grants give “faculty whose talents and interests are drawn in this direction” an opportunity to develop and pilot creative courses or connections among courses “as appropriate to their goals for their own courses and students.” Both faculty and students will undoubtedly benefit:

• Students in CTG-supported courses will observe and learn about the same or related content or skill from two or more individual faculty with different perspectives, methods, philosophies, and perhaps disciplinary approaches. Students will almost certainly receive a more integrated understanding of this content or skill as a result.

• Faculty members will develop a connectedness to and familiarity with other courses, disciplines, and faculty colleagues. They may also broaden their pedagogical repertoire by seeing “how someone else does it.” In addition, collaborative teaching experiences can serve as models of good practice and contribute to the scholarship of teaching & learning through publications and presentations.

Some Types of Collaborative Teaching

• Team teaching—two or more faculty co-teaching a course

• Linked courses—a group of students co-enrolled in two or more separate courses with some coordination of syllabi and assignments and with linked or complementary skills and/or content

• Course clusters—two or more sections of the same course or different courses with a plenary weekly meeting or other common activities

• Integrated lecture series—one or more faculty member(s) plan(s) course; guest faculty provide lectures/mini-lectures, panel presentations according to their expertise

• Learning communities--faculty members and often Student Affairs staff collaborate in co-teaching, cluster, or integrated-lecture arrangements, perhaps with related residence hall and/or co-curricular programs

Demonstrated here are some different levels of faculty collaboration possible within the CTG program at RC. An important point to remember about any kind of collaborative teaching is this: “The greater the level of integration desired, the higher the level of collaboration required” (James R. Davis, Interdisciplinary Courses and Team Teaching: New Arrangements for Learning, American Council on Education, 1995).

Possible Structures for Connecting Courses

• Two or more courses with co-enrolled students

• Two or more courses meet at same time and have some plenary sessions

• Two or more courses with an integrative seminar session taught by both professors (students might or might not be required to take both courses)

• One or more faculty members teach a course but involve additional faculty in planning the course and serving as guest presenters

• Two or more courses use a common reading, activity, or assignment but use different disciplinary approaches (students might or might not be required to take both courses)

o For example, freshman composition and sociology courses both read Friday Night Lights (by Buzz Bissinger)

▪ Sociology uses the book as a case study to examine the effects of a community’s emphasis on athletics

▪ Composition course examines racial prejudice in this book and other materials; students write an analytical essay on topic using examples from the book

• Students develop a multi-stage assignment (individual and/or group projects such as learning logs, literature searches, papers, oral presentations or poster sessions, mini-conferences) in two or more courses, using different disciplinary approaches or formats (same students in both courses)

Possible Approaches to Interdisciplinary Collaboration (with Examples)

Historical period or location/culture

• Flowering of Greek and Roman Civilization (History, Literature, Philosophy, Art History, Religion, Political Science)

• Contemporary Studies (Political Philosophy, Critical Theory, History & Philosophy of Science, Literature)

• European Studies (History, Politics, Geography, Theater, Art, Literature)

Theme

• Literature of Social Responsibility (English & Sociology)

• Looking for America (English, Anthropology, History, Communications, Sociology)

• Critical Choices for America (Economics, Geography, History, Political Science, Sociology)

• Drama as Politics (Theater, Literature, Political Science)

Texts

• Great Texts (History, Literature, Political Science, Religion, Biology)

• Introduction to Humanities (Philosophy & American Literature)

• Ideas That Shaped the West (Philosophy & Science)

• What Is Enlightenment? The Science, Culture, & Politics of Reason (History, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy, Political Science, Literature)

Issues

• Human Rights: A Civilization in Crisis (English & Government)

• What Is Life? (Biology & Philosophy)

• Race and Ethnicity (American Studies & Political Science)

• Violence: Personal & Societal Issues (Psychology & Sociology)

Explore topic in larger context

• Scientific Inquiry (Philosophy, History of Science, Astronomy, Geology, Biology)

• What Is Life? (Biology & Philosophy)

• The Practice of Medicine and You (Biology & Health Policy)

• Living on the Water Planet (Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Geology)

• Elements of Nutrition (Chemistry, Biochemistry, Psychology, Social Sciences)

• Building Leaders (Business & Psychology)

• Philosophy of Natural Science (Philosophy, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Geology)

• Sensory Worlds: The Ecology, Physiology, and Psychology of Perception (Biology & Psychology)

• Shake, Rattle, and Roll (History & Music)

Visual & performing arts

• Art and Politics (Art History & Political Science)

• The Lively Arts (Music, Dance, Art)

• Exploring the Arts (Art, Music, Dance, Theater, Poetry)

• Romanticism in the Arts (Music, Art, Literature)

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