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Models for collaborative teaching

Contents (click to jump to a section)

• Why collaborate across HEIs?
• Cross-HEI collaboration (cont.)
• The Waterloo model
• The MANTCHI model: teaching units
• Small unit size is important
• The MANTCHI model (cont.)
  • True reciprocal collaborative teaching
• Structure of an ATOM's web pages for export
• Teacher Overview page's structure
• Teacher details
• Issues / contrasts

Why collaborate across HEIs?

The structure of HE is that:

• Individuals specialise in narrow topics; but are required to teach relatively broadly: so a lot of teaching is done by people who are not leading experts.

• Expertise is spread across the world: probably no subject where one dept. has more expertise than the whole of the rest of the world.

But instead, perhaps multi-national consortia will provide overwhelming combined expertise and quality through collaboration within a discipline but across HEIs.

Cross-HEI collaboration (cont.)

This talk concerns teaching HCI
(Human Computer Interaction)

Success may depend on quality, including originality and distinctiveness:

• Content quality from expertise of contributors in that small topic

• Up-to-dateness
  (particularly critical for professionals)

• Original forms of learning and teaching to suit materials, target learners (e.g. professionals in work), and a distributed collaborative course.
  

The Waterloo model

Consortium of mainly Canadian universities, none of whom could offer the whole course alone.

A variety of kinds of unit of various sizes (to suit / attract the target market), and some novel types.

E.g.

• Whole semester courses (100-130 learner hours)
  
• Seminar units (~ 20-30 learner hours)
  
• Exercises or ATOMs ( ~ 10 learner hours)
  
• Case studies (30-60 minutes)
  

The MANTCHI model: teaching units

• An exercise authored at one site,
  
• Delivered at several other sites by "local deliverers"
  
• Supported by a "remote expert" (usually the author)
  
• In later deliveries, use stored example material from earlier ones ("TRAILs")
  

These units called "ATOMs"
(Autonomous Teaching Objects in MANTCHI)
8 ATOMs both written and delivered.
(2 more written)

Target size of a unit is quite small:
One week's work for students on a module
(Approx. 8 hours)

Small unit size is important

• Small unit size important for flexible acceptance.
  (cf. the EUROMET project)

• Different situations / courses / HEIs require different materials and curricula.

• Small units increase the chance of being able to re-use some of what is used elsewhere.

• Much easier to introduce one or two ATOMs than to redesign a whole course

• ATOMs correspond to a common course planning unit: a week's student activity.

• Most deliverers will want to try out only one or two before committing to greater use.

The MANTCHI model (cont.)

True reciprocal collaborative teaching

• I.e. getting the "users" perspective into the design team.

• Done by symmetrical barter, not high level market trading.

• This matches existing structure of HE: expertise spread widely, but all must deliver broad courses.

• You get an exercise by an expert in exchange for re-using your best material.
  So curriculum quality goes up and/or the quality of topics you aren't fully expert on.
  And your exercise gets improved faster through use.

• After a year or two of direct support by the remote expert, you probably feel able to do it on your own: so can see this as staff development

Structure of an ATOM's web pages for export

1. The teacher overview page, intended for teachers browsing for ATOMs they might choose to use in their courses.

2. Teacher details: fuller notes for teachers, with instructions for them, and rationales for why the exercise is the way it is

3. The learner details page: the instructions for learners. This is likely to have the basic explanation and description of the ATOM, and also acts like a handout for students

4. The course home page (for learners) for a particular delivery of an ATOM

Teacher Overview page's structure

Summary State the topic and type of ATOM.

How the concept fits into the course
Student prerequisite knowledge
Student prerequisite skills
Course level

Timetabling: how the activity fits into the course
Amount of student work
Amount of contact hours
Group work
Relationship to the rest of the course
Activity plan (probably a pointer to the student page)
Assessment

Resources needed
Special
Remote expert
Software
Hardware
Reading

History and admin.

Structure of the ATOM's web pages

Teacher details [Notes for teachers and authors]

Objectives

How it fits into the course

Rationale (why is the exercise designed this way?)

Delivery
Planning
Resources/media

TRAILs: past student work

Evaluation reports and comments

Issues / contrasts

Are authors and deliverers the same?

No: Using bought-in textbook, or MANTCHI model

Re-processing through independent deliverers is a powerful extra quality check, and teachers learn
(cf. "teachback" technique).

Unit size

Designing for, and supporting Re-use