Team teaching

Listening to only one person talk can be boring. Listening to a discussion is much less so. “Team teaching” can mean many things, but in this case we are referring to two instructors are both actively involved in lecturing at the same time, as some sort of conversation between them. It is a form of co-teaching.

When it works well, it makes a lecture much more dynamic and engaging, and reduces the load for each person to plan everything because you can rely on two minds to do it live. The difficulty is that you need to coordinate and it is our nature to fill all silences, instead of yielding to make a conversation.

Basics

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Demo of team teaching. Two people are speaking, in this case one is typing and giving the small point of view, and one is explaining the big point of view.

The general idea is that you want to make your teaching event a conversation. Pay attention to news broadcasts, game streams, podcasts, etc. to see this in action: it makes things much more interesting to listen to. Usually, they try to do this by having two different roles that complement each other.

The basic idea is that you want to keep a constant conversation going. This can be a mutual discussion, one person explaining big concepts and one the details, one person asking questions and the other answering, or some other combination. This is not simply two people taking turns in different sections.

With team teaching, there is less need for the instructors to prepare every single thing perfectly, since you can rely on two brains to get you through areas you haven’t perfectly prepared. In fact, this is good, because then your learners will see things go slightly wrong and your live debugging (it will look like you wanted something to go wrong to teach it).

Still, you want to agree on a plan in advance, and know what the roles will be.

One of the most important principles of ship handling is that there be no ambiguity as to who is controlling the movements of the ship. One person gives orders to the ship’s engine, rudder, lines, and ground tackle. This person is said to have the “conn.”

— James Alden Barber, 2005, “Introduction”, The Naval Shiphandler’s Guide, p. 8. Mark B. Templeton, via wikipedia

As the quote says, in any large enough operation, multiple people are involved, but responsibilities should be clear. At least, one person should have the responsibility for time-keeping and overall flow. This should be integrated into your co-teaching plan.

We propose some basic models, but of course there is a continuum. And you can (+should) switch up models, or roles within the model, in different sections.

Example of a teaching plan

R and S usually teach a HPC tutorial each year via co-teaching. The general plan is:

Day 1: “talker and typer” format. R is the talker (primary) and S is the typer (secondary). R goes through the main points and tells S what to do in the demos. S pretends to be learning and doesn’t do anything until told.
Day 2: swap roles but otherwise like day 1
Day 1 and 2, sections without exercises (for example, “what is slurm?”): “interviewer and expert” format. Switch primary to “interviewer” and secondary to “expert”, and the primary “interviews” the expert to explain what’s going on.

Model 1: Guide and demo-giver (talker and typer)

One person serves the role of guide (talker), explaining the big picture and possibly even the examples. The demo-giver (typer) shows the typing and does the examples, and could take the role of a learner who is asking about what is going on, the person who actually explains the details, or an occasional commenter. Anyway, the guide is the one navigating through the course and bringing up material in a logical order for the audience and “has the conn”.

Hands-on demos and exercises work especially well like this. Here, the guide would follow the outline and serve as the director (see below).

Guide	Demo-giver
Introduces most material
Goes through theory	Asks questions that a learner may ask
Introduces type-along
Explains steps of type-along	Types during type-along
Asks questions to Demo-giver during type-along	Explains details what they are typing and what happens
Looks at Notes during type-along	Looks at Notes during theory
Discusses during Q&A	Discusses during Q&A

Model 2: Interviewer and expert

In this case, there is an interviewer who pretends to be a learner is asking questions to an expert who is mostly explaining. The interviewer serves as a learner or spotter, fills in gaps by asking relevant questions, and tries to keep things on track. The interviewer “has the conn”.

Either person could type and do the demos.

Interviewer	Expert
Asks questions to expert
Follows up with learner questions	Answers questions using their special knowledge
Pushes forward though the material
Asks questions that a learner may ask
Introduces type-along
Explains type-along and material	Explains type-along and material
Looks at Notes most of the time	Looks at Notes when possible
Discusses during Q&A	Discusses during Q&A

Model 3: Teacher and student

In this model, someone takes the role of the teacher and gives the lesson. The student pretents to be the studend and asks relevant questions.

This is closer to normal teaching, so feels more natural to do. The big disadvantage is that it’s the tendency of the presenter to keep talking, and the tendency of the interviewer to be nice and not interrupt. This negates most of the benefit you would hope to have, but is much better than solo teaching. The “Guide and demo-giver” is usually better when there are demos and “Interviewer and expert” when there aren’t. The teacher “has the conn”.

Teacher	Student
Guides through the material
Gives demos	Asks questions a learner may ask
	Watches the Notes closely
Keeps time	Reminds about time

Hints

With more than one person, there is a risk of seeming uncoordinated when the team doesn’t know who is supposed to move the lesson forward. It’s not bad to have short discussions to decide what to do next, it makes the show seem interactive and like it is responding to learner needs. But if it happens too much, it becomes noticeable.

As quoted above, you could adopt a principle which exists in many domains: at any time, only one person is in control (we call them the “primary”). This person is responsible for understanding the current situation and checking with other instructors, but in when you just need to something and no one has strong opinions, you don’t debate, the primary decides.

Note there can be “primary” for the whole lesson preparation, that is different than the “primary” for some sections.

We can’t tell you what works best for you. But models 1 and 2 above tend to work very well and give a clear “primary”. The need for someone to “have the conn” is why we don’t recommend fully equal co-teachers. Instead, divide the course into parts and use the two models for each part.

Of course, there are other roles in a workshop.
- The Notes manager pays particular attention to the audience questions. They might be a different person from the co-teachers and they can interrupt anytime.
- The director manages the flow of the course itself.
- The Director could be completely separate from the people on screen, and somehow sending signals to the teachers as needed.
If you ever go off-plan, that’s OK. You can discuss during the lecture so the audience can know what you are doing and why. You want to adjust to the audience more than you would in a solo course. But at the same time, be wary of deviating too much from the material that the watchers have, since it will be disorienting.
Two people works well. With three, it’s hard to allow everyone to speak equally and people tend to jump on top of each other in the gaps - or no one talks, to give others a chance to say something. You could have particular segments where different pairs of people adopt the main roles, and others speak up if they want. Or, at that point, make it a panel discussion format (multiple experts and one interviewer)
Of course, it helps to have a good plan of what you are going to do. But if only one person knows that plan, this strategy can still work, especially if that person is the presenter in model 2.
The less preparation you have, the more useful it is to strictly define the roles of each person (to ensure someone is in charge of moving it forward).

Please send us more suggestions to add to this list.

Preparation

This is one proposed model for preparing for team teaching:

Talk with your co-teacher. These hints assume a two-person team.
Decide what material will be covered, overall timing, strategy, etc. Review the schedule from last time and make a schedule for this time, with timings, breaks, etc. Usually you don’t need to get creative - use what works.
Divide up the material. For each episode, decide the model to use and roles. If in doubt, start with the guide/demo-giver model with the more experienced instructor as the guide.
For each episode, one person prepares the outline (the order of topics to be presented, key questions to ask, etc.) - usually the guide or interviewer.
- You don’t need to plan every step in detail but it can be useful to prepare the session together and step through the choreography (e.g. “now I will show this and then give you the screen and then ask you to do this … you will lead this 20 minute block and then I will lead that 20 minute block and please ask me questions while I present X”).
Discuss the plan together and make any revisions as needed.
Do one run-through.
Teach as planned.

Then, just go! Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, if either person wonders what to do next, just pause some or ask the other. This imperfection is what makes it more dynamic and exciting, and in almost all cases the audience has been impressed with the co-teaching strategy, even if it’s not perfect.