IU SBC Fellows: Good Practices

Good Practice from Randall E. Osborne, IU East

Title	Team Teaching and Guest Experts in Distributed Education
Course or Project	N120 A Biology of Mental Illness
Audience	Beginning undergraduates
Active	Still active
Background Information	Almost a decade ago (mid -nineties), there were a number of panel presentations by those who had used the two most recent technological means of presenting courses via distributed education. These were interactive video and Web-based or online courses. Among the admonitions were, “Do not try to team teach,” and, “Don’t use these for undergraduate classes.”
Teaching Challenge	Sometimes the technology of distributed education creates a barrier to learning. The student is ready for business as usual in the traditional classroom with one instructor in a self-contained classroom as they learn about the topic as it is presented from a one discipline perspective. Enrolling the student in thinking in terms of learning outside the traditional classroom setting is easier when they have an opportunity to interact with teachers who provide different perspectives.
Good Practice	Years later we are here to suggest team-teaching, especially in undergraduate courses as a best practice. Whether in an online class or in using an interactive video format or a hybrid of the two, there are definite advantages to team-teaching. 1. Having an instructor at each end of an interactive video class gives the stability to the classroom that students appreciate. In undergraduate classrooms with more than three or four students, if team teacher is not available, we have found that using a classroom assistant is helpful. With more than six students it is essential. On evaluation our student course satisfaction increased significantly when there was a non-teaching classroom assistant in classrooms where there was not a teacher or team teacher. 2. Stepping out to try new media for instruction is a risk. Having another teacher to share that experience is re-enforcing. 3. Team teaching adds diversity of perspective. Whether the team teachers are from the same or complementary disciplines, students can sense the differences (some subtle and others profound) that different instructors bring to topics. 4. A variation (or perhaps an addition) to team teaching is to bring experts into the classroom to discuss various topics. In the interactive video classes, students across the state have benefited from having experts in the interactive classroom that would seldom be able to travel the distance to give a presentation for the course. In the online course, an expert is often willing to dedicate a week or two online to provide an article or site for the students to explore and post comments or questions in a forum set aside for that specific expert. Experts often appreciate the opportunity for asynchronous participation. We grade student performance in these conversations by giving points for participating (asking a question or submitting a comment that would elicit a response from the expert).
Impact	Having several instructors with different perspectives increases student interest in the subject.
Assessment	Instructors provide peer review for each other (or others). Student evaluation addresses this issue specifically.
Keywords	Motivating student participation, real-world problems, forums
Technical Format	Interactive video, Oncourse

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