Team Teaching that Goes the Distance: Team Instruction for a Broadcast Introductory Engineering Course

The efficacy of team teaching, known also as co-teaching or collaborative teaching, as an instructional strategy is well established in the education literature 1,2,3,4,5,6. Despite its proven legitimacy, mixed feelings concerning its practice persist: the mere mention of “team teaching” can summon a range of images, from collaborative, collegial nirvana to a “who’s-in-charge?” edged chaos. For the better, team teaching has been compared to a “...semester long jam session” with instructors who “...share a deep love for the material...”2. For the worse it has created confusion and contention rather than brought clarity. Many agree that the elusive key to a co-taught success stems from the just right combination of topic and team: a topic of multior inter-disciplinary appeal combined with a team of instructors who share mutual respect, an interest in expanding viewpoints within their own disciplines, and a openness to risk-taking in their classrooms 2,3. This paper explores the use of an adapted team teaching approach, team-at-a-distance teaching, as an effective instructional strategy when put to practice for pre-professional engineering courses within a regional campus framework. With this newer twist on team teaching pedagogy, a multi-disciplinary instructor team is geographically dispersed with students that interact through a broadcast delivery system. Thus, an instructional platform is created to mimic the student learning environment and promote desired student outcomes. This approach is developed for delivery of an introductory engineering course. The course, Introduction to Engineering Design, is delivered via Interactive Video Conferencing (IVC) synchronously to students located at four regional sites throughout the state by the preengineering faculty team. The instructional team consists of four engineering faculty who share the overall responsibility for development and delivery of the regional campus pre-engineering program. Introduction to Engineering Design is a two credit course taught every Fall semester that, for pre-engineering students, fulfills the introductory engineering course requirement for every engineering discipline within the College of Engineering (CoE). In developing the instructional platform, the faculty team identified four guiding tenets of the course: • Promote the Pre-Engineering Program: To fulfill introductory course requirements of all departments within the CoE using the combined expertise of a multidisciplinary instructional team. Page 22411.2 • Promote Distance Delivery of Engineering Education: To engage remote students in a distance delivered framework with a geographically dispersed instructional team. • Promote Engineering Professionalism: To educate students in the profession of engineering and engineering ethics by highlighting the experiences of a multidisciplinary instructional team and practicing engineers as invited speakers. • Promote Engineering Recruitment and Retention: To excite students to complete engineering degrees and join the engineering profession with a learner-centered instructional environment. Based on the desired outcomes, instructors improvised the team at a distance-teaching approach to reflect the primary tenets of the course: 1) each instructor represents a unique engineering discipline and collectively the team provides a foundation for a broad introductory curriculum, 2) each instructor is physically located at a different regional campus, mimicking the geographical dispersion of students and supporting student learning and engagement, and 3) together, the interplay of the multi-disciplinary, geographically dispersed instructor team realistically depicts today’s engineering workplace and promotes the field as a viable, meaningful career choice through open discussion and learner discovery. Results from student course evaluations and surveys, and instructor reflections are used to comment on and assess the basic effectiveness of the instructional approach. Team Teaching as Pedagogy Team teaching originated as pedagogy in 1963 when William Alexander, “Father of the American middle school”, proposed a concept of grouping teachers into teams to educate students groups as a means for junior high school reform. The perceived benefits of team teaching, namely the creation of a supportive, inclusive environment for students and the necessity for teaming teachers to formally engage one another in planning, integration, evaluation, and reflection, have helped promote its use across K-12 and into higher education 7. Team teaching is collaborative teaching. For all of its many benefits, teaching collaboratively requires much above and beyond what is required if one is teaching solo. A true co-taught course is integration come to life: from the interdisciplinary nature of its subject matter to the teambased delivery of its lessons. As noted by Schlosberg and Sisk, true team teaching is not commensurate with “...the oft-used model of ‘tag-team-teaching,’ where instructors alternate lectures, often with the other instructor absent”6. Clearly, the added complexity and need for coordination that ensues deters many from attempting a team taught course, perhaps most often in higher education. Several team teaching show-stoppers for university courses are documented in the literature including: questions of credit for teaching loads, dueling egos, collegial competitiveness, lack of precedent, lack of administrative incentives, logistic and scheduling issues, and cost 3,4,6. A noteworthy and illuminating look at the so-called rules of effective P ge 22411.3 collaborative teaching in higher education is presented in the “Ten Commandments of Team Teaching” 8. Team teaching is well-founded in the higher education literature. Our interest in this article is to qualitatively assess the use of a team teaching strategy to promote engineering education student outcomes in distance education environments, namely for courses taught via broadcast delivery to non-traditional student audiences. While a review of literature reveals that team teaching is historically applied in fields of social sciences and humanities, several sources document its application to create “custom” interdisciplinary courses that combine engineering with other fields, namely business, mathematics, and the natural sciences 3,9,10. New emphasis on learner centered strategies for improved Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) instruction10,11 is reflected in recent articles documenting the use of multiand inter-disciplinary instructor teams to enhance introductory and capstone undergraduate engineering course outcomes 12,13,14. The largest instructor team (15 instructors) noted was used to teach an multidisciplinary course in advanced building design to senior engineering students 15. Evidence of use of team teaching pedagogy in synchronous and asynchronous distance education is documented. In the case of synchronous delivery, video conferencing was used across five campuses in Wisconsin to deliver a course in Early Childhood and Special Education 16. The authors noted the added cultural and linguistic diversity brought to the classroom by synchronously linking regional campus sites. A blended synchronous model was proposed for international educational collaboration 17. The proposed model reflects the synchronous regional campus instructional paradigm described in this article. The authors’ maintain that today’s educators must engage in collaborative efforts using web-based technologies in order to retain competitiveness in an increasingly digital work and market place. Finally, team teaching via synchronous interactive video conferencing was used to present a course on nuclear power plant operations between two universities in Ohio 18. The authors note that traditional teacher -centered presentations (lectures) are “particularly unengaging” for remote students and variations in teaching approaches are needed to actively involve students in a distance learning environment. Stated use of a team teaching strategy for improving non-traditional student outcomes was found3, although it did not occur in a distance learning environment. Associate in Pre-Engineering Degree Program: A Regional Pathway to Engineering Education In response to requests from Utah-based industry for qualified engineers and to meet the needs of working professionals in rural Utah communities, Utah State University (USU) began its Associates in Pre-Engineering Degree program in January 2009. This two-year degree program allows students to complete general education and pre-professional (freshman and sophomore level) engineering course requirements at multiple regional campuses located throughout the state. In this way, regional campus students can fulfill all of the requirements of the first two years of an engineering bachelor’s degree without disrupting their work schedules, traveling, or relocating. Relocation can be delayed until students’ junior-senior years when they enter the P ge 22411.4 professional engineering program and complete their course of study at the main university campus in Logan. While the overriding purpose of the degree is to provide a pathway to a traditional four year engineering degree for Utah’s non-traditional students, all students completing the Associates in Pre-Engineering degree are prepared for advanced careers as technicians and technologists within their chosen disciplines. Since its inception at the Brigham City regional campus in 2009, the Pre-Engineering program has expanded to the Uintah Basin and Tooele regional campuses. The recent merger of USU with the College of Eastern Utah (CEU) will expand the program to southeastern Utah. The USU Department of Engineering and Technology Education (ETE), housed in the College of Engineering (CoE) and located in Logan, administers the program and employs program faculty. The Pre-Engineering program instructional model takes adva