IGE yt INNOVATION ABSTRACTS to:
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AGA Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development
rn With support from the W. K. Keliogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation

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TEAM TEACHING: AN ALTERNATIVE TO LECTURE FATIGUE

Team teaching is a concept whose time has come. In our thinking, team teaching is not a professor and
teaching assistant relationship nor is it an interdisciplinary format wherein individual lecturers from different
disciplines alternate in the same course. It is simply true team work between two qualified instructors who, to-
gether, make presentations to an audience.

Instructional Advantages

Elimination of Lecture-Style Instruction. Lecture, the speaking aloud from prepared notes to an audience, is
rapidly losing support in favor of alternate forms of instruction. Even instructors, conditioned to lecturer's reci-
tations, do not find themselves enthusiastic about listening at length to such monologues and should not expect
students to be. Lectures require students to act as passive receptors of communicated information, but team
teaching involves the student in the physical and mental stimulation created by viewing two individuals at work
and creates an at-home atmosphere in which the student engages in a form of channel-changing. The dynamic
interplay of two minds and personalities weaving through a subject, presenting the development of an idea in-
stead of a finished set of facts can excite and involve any student.

Faculty as Models for Discussion and Disagreement. Presenting themselves as models of discussion and
disagreement, the faculty team communicates a mode of civilized behavior, no matter how serious the disagree-
ments may be, as well as exposing students to material content. Uneducated by prior schooling in processes of
conflict resolution and cooperative intellectual endeavors, it is fanciful to believe that the underdeveloped stu-
dent can, or will, respond in a civilized manner to provocative statements or situations upon leaving school. It
has been observed of graduating students that while they may be educated--they are not necessarily civilized!

Use of Available Human Resources. Neither additional costs for the acquisition of expensive materials or ser-
vices nor the time delay required to initiate a new system are necessary to institute a team teaching program.
Faculty is readily available within the teaching institution, and faculty requires only minimal reorganization to
put a team into operation. :

Revitalization of Instructional Capabilities. In attempting to improve the process of education, all too often
educators look outside for the latest in “gadgetry” or other fads. From each of these outreaches, the educational
establishment has eventually recoiled, unsatisfied. Inevitably, educational reformers return to the basic relation-
ships of faculty and students, reinstating outmoded presentations of pure “listen and gain wisdom’ lectures.
These fluctuating attempts are all designed to amplify and deepen communications between students and in-
structors. Team teaching begins with the recognition that the instructor/student link is critical and offers an ap-
proach that has been shown to stimulate and provoke, while expanding and enriching student understanding.

Since the Greeks, dialogue has been acknowledged as one of the finest methods of learning. While teach-
ing, the instructors are drawing from each other and from themselves both factual and conceptual knowledge
that might otherwise lie dormant. Lecturing in isolation, individual instructors lack both the insightful criticism
and exposure to alternate styles necessary to expand, rethink, and reform presentations, thus denying to them-
selves the accessibility of ongoing renewal.

Stimulation of Interest in Traditional Courses. Required liberal education courses (e.g., history, philosophy,
literature, government) have a reputation among students for their stiltified presentations. In other words, they
are considered boring. The instructor responds with disbelief that their subject, which they know to be fascinat-
ing, is inaccurately considered boring and irrelevant.

Team teaching is not boring. It is exciting to watch in person or on television. Students are drawn into the
situational dynamic from the first moment. In spite of themselves, in spite of all they have heard to the contrary
about the subject, students begin to share the exuberance and intellectual discourse the professors communicate.

Effective Use of Facilities. Institutions, especially older universities, contain large lecture halls which are
often unused because they are unsuitable to. advanced courses, are cold and impersonal. Team teaching can re-
vitalize large lecture hall usage. The team in action is larger than the sum of its parts, and the presentation thus
becomes magnified to fill the hall. At-home students find that educational programming offers the unheard of
in education, entertainment.

 

i Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712