Team Teaching Discovery Among Undergraduate Faculty in a Baccalaureate Program

As college education is changing in the 21^st century, the role of college faculty must also change to meet these demands. In our baccalaureate nursing program, college faculty often teach classes independently with little collaboration or input from peers. The courses are led by two course coordinators who are responsible for lecturing in individual sections and managing student issues. Course coordinators are recognized as the primary course faculty. Many of their responsibilities include formulating the course syllabus, topical outline, developing exams, and mentoring new faculty. The faculty associate role was also assigned to the course faculty as additional support. The faculty associate’s role included grading assignments and managing frequent communication with both on and off campus clinical adjunct instructors. Faculty in the associate role reported a sense of exclusion in the teaching team. As a result, the undergraduate faculty agreed to pilot Team Teaching in all undergraduate nursing courses in the Summer of 2018.

In order to address faculty assignments and create a more cohesive work environment that translates to a healthy, productive environment for all, a task force of six members in the undergraduate nursing department was developed in the Spring 2018 semester. These six members were tasked with creating and evaluating a team teaching model at the College of Nursing. Current best practice and evidence regarding team teaching were explored in order to develop a survey. The purpose of this survey was to identify an approach to team teaching that included strategies and addressed barriers to team teaching. This focus group also included planned course visits to examine how faculty utilized team teaching in their classroom. The primary goal was to determine if team teaching in the baccalaureate nursing program was beneficial to both faculty and students and, if so, determine best practices for instituting this new model of teaching.

Our Task Force focused on skilled communication, true collaboration, effective decision making, appropriate staffing, meaningful recognition, and authentic leadership. The task force identified that support is needed from the College of Nursing in implementing strategies to providing effective team teaching efforts. The current literature states that team teaching influences learning styles, team skills, professional behaviors, and development in general. There is a need for more work to emphasize team based teaching among faculty.

The Task Force developed an eleven question anonymous online survey to ascertain perspectives on team teaching and preparation for team teaching, communication within the team, team dynamics, and conflict resolution. Survey items reflected concepts from the available literature about team/collaborative teaching. Surveys were distributed to the eighteen faculty members who were teaching summer 2018 undergraduate nursing courses. Fourteen faculty members responded to the survey indicating a response rate of 77.7%.

The survey results indicate that team teaching experiences varied with many more details to be explored by faculty at the faculty work group. Some of the perceived benefits include the ability to learn from one another while challenging each other to improve, changing teaching styles, and sharing greater expertise with students. A post survey is being conducted and those results will be presented to all faculty. Team teaching provides an opportunity to create healthy work environments by fostering collaboration and best practice in course delivery in the academic setting.