Collaborative Teaching: Reflections On A Cross Disciplinary Experience In Engineering Education

Most of us know a lot more about cooperative learning than about collaborative teaching. We are also far more sympathetic to the former than the latter. The principled virtues and practical benefits of having our students work together in teams seem altogether less attractive when we envision ourselves joined in (chained to?) a common teaching enterprise. While collaborative learning seems to offer an ethically compelling alternative to the competitive model of individualized achievement and assessment, the notion of collaborative teaching unnerves many of us because it implies a loss of professional autonomy–and, indeed, may suggest (to our colleagues, at least) that we’re not up to the task of doing our own pedagogical thing.