The Pedagogical Value of Co-Teaching: Case Study – Computer Science 3

Co-teaching, defined as the collaborative planning and delivery of teaching by two or more educators within the same learning space, is a people centric pedagogic approach than can promote student understanding, a sense of community and inclusion across cohorts as well as increae staff enjoyment of teaching.
In this series of Case Studies we talk to several academic staff who have been practicing Co-Teaching to understand how they approach this and what the benefits and challenges are.

Dr Andrea Schalk and Dr Joe Razavi

Unit: COMP31311 Giving Meaning to Programs, a small optional unit for final year computer science students. This unit is theoretical and requires students to master advanced concepts – students have called it `challenging in a good way’. Co-taught by Joe Razavi and Andrea Schalk

How long have you been co-delivering for your course units and what was the rationale for taking this approach?

This is a unit that was newly created for 2020-21, so it’s been a few years. My colleague and I had a vision for a theoretical course unit that introduces students to the principles of proving properties of programs using a mathematical approach. This is an active research area and theoretical results have had an impact on modern programming language design. However, this is not material usually taught at undergraduate level so it was clear that putting this together would be a big task, and by deciding to tackle this together we felt we’d increase our chances of succeeding in finding a balance between providing the technical details underpinning the subject while also making it accessible to our target audience.

What does co-teaching mean on this unit?

Because of the nature of the material we decided early on that we would have to produce lecture notes, and that was a big task. For different chapters we swapped roles between outlining and filling in details. In the course of producing the notes we realized that our different strengths and weaknesses could be better brought to bear by not strictly sticking with the original plan. By creating the notes jointly we both ended up with ownership of the material. This unit is delivered in a blended manner, and there are videos to support the notes. In a typical week, there’s a joint video for the key idea, and one or two videos from each of us. We deliver the teaching sessions jointly, and we’ve also been combining forces in coming up with exam questions.

Can you explain about how you deliver your sessions, what is the dynamic between the teaching staff, do you adopt different roles?

In the first year we delivered this unit following the flipped paradigm, but we decided that for the material we taught this didn’t work well – it left students alone for too long with mathematical ideas they were struggling with, so we changed to delivering a workshop that introduces students to new concepts by getting them to work on paper and pencil exercises in small groups before they work through more material. We developed a format where in the first hour the students work on the exercises with support from the team, and in the second hour we discuss solutions with them. Due to outside circumstances we ended up with Joe taking the lead in solving the exercise on the whiteboard, with me making sure we use student input, and pitching in with observations. We’ve developed a bit of a comedy duo dynamic, so that we ended up sticking with this approach. It gives an informal flavour to our sessions and we’ve had a lot of positive feedback in unit questionnaires for that.

What are the benefits/drawbacks to this approach for you as staff and also your students?

Not being solely responsible for teaching sessions reduces stress, because there are two of us we’re more likely to remember various subtle points that are helpful, and we’re able to use a dialogue which tends to be more engaging than just one person talking. The students tell us they like it – the only downside is that it does take more time.

What has been the impact of this approach on your non-teaching time – for example moving from 100% teaching of half a unit to 50% teaching of an entire unit?

Because in Computer Science we mostly use a blended approach to teaching we have less contact time, but we try to make that time count. Having two colleagues in the workshops is one way of making that happen. In the first year creating all the resources was very stressful, and we weren’t too far ahead of the students, but now that the asynchronous materials exist they don’t need a lot of maintenance.

Has there been any change in Student outcomes since you adopted this approach or any student feedback that relates to Team teaching?

We conceived this unit to be taught in this way from when it was first introduced, so there’s no before’ and after’ to compare. Here is some UEQ feedback we received:

‘Joe and Andrea’s dynamic in the workshops was both educational and entertaining.’

‘Andrea “heckling” Joe whenever he made a mistake kept things fresh while also ensuring we kept paying attention.’

‘This environment made me comfortable in answering questions regardless of if I was right or wrong (turns out I was wrong many times!).’

‘Having two teachers challenge each other on any inconsistencies or poor explanations filled most gaps that may have arisen with just one teacher in the workshops.’

`The workshops are not only useful for learning – they were the place I learned the majority of the concepts in this module, but also very entertaining. I worked very hard to not miss the 10ams as I enjoyed them so much.’

How do you approach the planning of the sessions? Both plan sessions, take it turns etc.

We have worksheets with basic explanations of the key ideas, so the sessions are already planned. Originally we had a brief discussion of the kind of activity that we wanted to use, and we took turns fleshing these out, depending on capacity. We have made a lot of changes since then based on what we saw in the sessions, and we’ve discussed how to address shortcomings and agreed on a course of action to make those happen.

Any issues with Student queries? Do they favour one over the other? As you are sharing responsibility for the whole course how are you ensuring consistency of messaging to students?

For queries we do sometimes redirect students to the other if the question matches their expertise better, but we can’t see any evidence that students have a preference regarding who they want to talk to, for example at the end of a session when we’re taking individual questions. We do try to anticipate decisions we have to make so that we can have a short discussion about pros and cons of going down a particular path – having two perspectives is really helpful and makes it less likely that we overlook unintended consequences. If students ask about something where we haven’t got a position we typically check in with the other before giving an `official’ answer.

Anything about this approach to teaching that you didn’t foresee?

Where to start? Producing notes in this way was not something either of us had done before and it required a great deal of trust on both sides, producing videos jointly added a bit to the covid learning curve, but over all the biggest surprise was how enjoyable and stimulating it is to have somebody who is invested in what I teach and who is always willing to discuss issues, float ideas, and provide feedback (getting useful feedback is so valuable – it’s so difficult to get usually). This has been the most enjoyable experience of teaching I’ve ever had.

Advice for any staff wanting to adopt this approach?

Make sure that the team has a joint vision of what students will be expected to be able to do, and that members broadly agree on how teaching works. Working with others is inevitably frustrating at times – people have different ways of working and priorities. But the rewards are very real when it works.

Is there anything else that you think other teaching colleagues will benefit from relating to your co-teaching experiences

Think about what you’re doing in your sessions that is enhanced by having two people there. In our workshops, in the first half it is being able to check in with groups of students (Student comment: `The workshops really foster a sense of closeness to the lecturers that you simply don’t get with most modules in CS. It is very valuable. It really feels like the lecturers are actual humans who care about sharing knowledge and explaining things to you, which is far more motivating.’), and in the second half it is about combining our expertise when working through solutions with the students (see above for student comments). When we started out, the sessions had a different nature and at least some students found our joint efforts confusing – it took us a while to arrive at a format that really works.

Thanks to Andrea and Joe for sharing their experiences

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