Team teaching

One of the most significant improvemest of our teaching has been the concept of co-teaching.

Co-teaching

Wikipedia: Co-teaching or team teaching is the division of labor between educators to plan, organize, instruct and make assessments on the same group of students, generally in the a common classroom,[1] and often with a strong focus on those teaching as a team complementing one another’s particular skills or other strengths.

This is not strictly an effect of moving online. However, the larger number of instructors and larger audiences make this practical on a wide scale.

Primary article

https://coderefinery.github.io/manuals/team-teaching/

Benefits

  • The course seems very interactive, much more so than expecting students to speak up. The co-teacher can take on the “voice of the audience”.

  • Quicker preparation time since co-teachers can rely on each other in unexpected situations.

  • One co-teacher can be effectively learning at the same time and thus acting as the “voice of the audience” in another way.

  • Great way to onboard new instructors - extensive training and preparation no longer needed.

  • More active minds means better able to watch and react to other feedback, such as HackMD or chat.

  • Less workload - one person does not have to prepare perfectly, any uncertainty can usually be quickly answered by the other.

Strategies

In reality, these strategies are mixed and matched even within a lesson, and there are many things between these:

  • One person gives lectures, one does the typing during demos.

  • “Interview”: One primarily doing the “teaching”, one guiding by asking questions - either as an interviewer or as a virtual learner.

Things that don’t work (are not team teaching):

  • Dividing up a lesson into parts, each person gives different parts independently.

Exercises

Exercise

Divide into groups of two or three. Choose one of the two models in the team-teaching page, and quickly (5 min) prepare a short topic (3-5 min) to team teach. You can quickly scan the “preparation” section at the bottom.

The challenge is not just to give the lesson, but to prepare the lesson quickly and rely on each other to give a good lesson anyway.

See also

(none yet)