Team Teaching in the Online Graduate Environment: Collaborative Instruction

Background

The terms cooperative teaching (Bauwens & Hourcade, 1995), team teaching and collaborative teaching (Welch & Sheridan, 1995), and co-teaching (Friend & Cook, 1996), are used frequently in the literature. Co-teaching is two or more people sharing responsibility for teaching some or all of the students assigned to a class. It involves the distribution of responsibility among people for planning, instruction, and evaluation of students (Cushman, 2004). Cook and Friend (1995, p. 2) describe co-teaching as “two or more professionals delivering substantive instruction to a diverse, or blended group of students in a single physical space.” Wenzlaff et al. (2002, p. 14) further state that co-teaching is “two or more individuals who come together in a collaborative relationship for the purpose of shared work for the outcome of achieving what none could have done alone.” Some may define this as a synergistic effect resulting from the collaboration of team teaching efforts. Team teaching can be described for the purpose of this action research as an equal partnership and expectation to contribute substantive material to maintain the integrity of an online course. This is not just a division of labor but a synergistic effect and expectation of mutual engagement to provide greater clarity and interaction with students.