Course Teams – a better way to teach?
Traditional university teachers teach alone, and their students have to work within the framework set by each lecturer, particularly since their work will be assessed by this person as well. Is this desirable? Could there be benefits from sharing the task of deciding both what to teach and how best to teach it? The Open University UK has from the beginning used teams of mixed expertise for the production of its multi-media courses. These courses are different from a single course of lectures, both in scale and because they require a complex production of resources far beyond what the single lecturer working alone could be expected to produce. However, there may be benefits in the team approach that could be adopted elsewhere, particularly now that use of ICT is so widespread.
How does a course team work ?
Watch the video (WMV, length 3:29)
A team is led by a course chair, who is an academic, keen to produce the course. He or she will have put forward proposals to the faculty, to persuade the university that funding should be provided and that the course will attract students. Courses do not get made unless there is a committed academic leading the activity, who takes responsibility for delivery of the course.
There are also other academics on the team, who will write or create particular units or components. There is no set number for how many this should be, but it does depend on the size of the course. Many of our courses are meant to take the equivalent of half a full-time year of study and so are very big – typically 600 hours study. It would be impossible for one person to teach all that on their own, and such teams might typically involve about 10 academics, some making more contribution to the course than others. However we also have very small course teams for our short courses, where sometimes only 2 or 3 academics have handled the whole production process. In some cases, where we lack internal staff with relevant expertise, course teams use external consultants quite a lot.
However, a course team also brings together staff with specialist expertise in editing, creating websites, audio-visual material, software and our new MOODLE platform. They work closely with the academics to co-create the resources that are required. Regional academic staff also play a role, particularly helping the course team to be realistic about what students can manage and reminding them of how students tend to respond to different course designs. Some course teams also include tutors so that they can keep in even closer touch with the student experience. Finally, the organisational demands of setting up regular meetings for the team, taking minutes, and generally project planning the whole activity, is carried out by a Course Manager, working full-time for the team.
Course teams – curse or blessing?
The course team has had its critics. Some have said that it creates a talking shop, with too much time in the early months wasted in discussion and not enough time spent on refining and improving the learnability of materials at the end, when the team comes under very great pressure to finish by the deadline. Others have defended the course team because they feel that teaching is greatly improved by each person’s ideas being discussed and broad experience brought to bear. Furthermore, when producing resources for study at a distance, two (and more) heads really are better than one. A variety of opinions and expertise is needed to ensure that the design of the course fits the diverse experience and situations of the students for whom it is intended.
Teaching quality
The course team is also at the heart of our processes for producing quality teaching. All resources are produced in draft form and critical comments are produced by members of the course team on each draft. Textual material always goes through two drafts and often more, until the course team is satisfied that the quality is right. All members of the team have to listen to their colleagues’ comments and to revise their material along lines decided by the course team. This applies to the most distinguished of professors!
The course chair plays an important role in ensuring that the discussion of each unit or resource is carried out in a constructive manner. Sometimes a small group of the team agrees to read the draft carefully and to provide written comments for the author in advance of the meeting. The author can then think through his or her response, and prepare for the discussion. Many of the comments will address issues to do with the clarity, learnability and length of the material. However impressive the academic content, equal attention must also be given to how effective it is as teaching material. Editors have also played a major role in achieving this. They are often the only person in addition to the chair who reads everything. They focus even more strongly on the quality of the communication of materials produced.
Keeping in touch with students
Watch the video (WMV, length 2:40)
Once a course is being studied by students, the course team reduces in size and in the time each person gives. The core members of the team will brief all tutors about the new course and what their role should be. Now most of our courses use computer mediated communication, the team can see what is going on in the tutor conferences and can intervene if necessary. Student reactions and queries will be there for all to see and the course chair can reflect on how successful the course seems to be.
A key moment will also be the end of course examination, when the remaining members of the course team mark the scripts of students and see how well they have responded to the questions set. In some cases students do not sit an examination but complete a piece of research or a project, which they write up as a report that is marked under examination conditions.
The course chair and the course team will also meet as an Examination and Awards Board at the end of the course study period, in order to review the progress of students in both continuous assessment and the examination. Reflecting on students’ response to the course and their success in the assessment may lead the team to make changes to the course design. These often involve some reduction in student workload, or clarification about how to study and what to prioritise. There will also be a report of student opinion on the course from the Institute of Educational Technology, which always surveys students at the end of the first year of a new course.
The course team – if we didn’t have it we’d have to invent it
One last point in favour of the course team relates to the fact that a course is likely to extend over a period of eight or even more years, during which it will required regular updating – with the Internet many courses are updated annually. Also there may be thousands of students on each course, and certainly several hundred. It would be much too risky to rely on the same person being able to carry out all the tasks necessary over such a period of time. We need a number of people who are familiar with a course, and committed to it, who can contribute their time during the life of the course. When staff leave, or give more time to research, we need to draw on the wider course team to carry out the role of course chair. All courses in presentation to students must have a course chair, and this is likely to be a different person at different times.
Teaching for us is not a series of lectures or seminars. It’s a continual project that runs every year, where we need to learn from each other and support each other in the course team, for what is a truly demanding but extremely stimulating task.
Mary Thorpe
Professor Mary Thorpe works at the Institute of Educational Technology, the Open University of the United Kingdom. She was video-interviewed during her visit to Turku, Finland on the 12th of October 2006.