Professors not exempt from classroom collaboration

Students are not the only ones that struggle with the challenges of teamwork at Penn. In many courses, professors work to balance the intricacies and complications that arise when teaching as a team.

The College of Arts and Sciences began experimenting with team teaching as part of the Pilot Curriculum in 2000, College Dean Dennis DeTurck said.

Unfortunately, course material often turned out to be overly complex with abstruse connections between the disciplines of different professors.

One decade later, Penn has abandoned the Pilot Curriculum but retained elements of team teaching.

Many courses, particularly those in the natural science departments, are now taught by more than one professor. While some professors teach side by side, others divide the curriculum into several sections.

“There are huge advantages to team teaching,” said Philip Rea, a Biology professor who teaches Biology 121, “Introduction to Bio-Molecular Biology Life.” and Biology 402, “Biochemistry,” with a team of his colleagues.

“What I really like about team teaching is that young people get exposed to rather different perspectives on things,” Rea said. “It’s a really powerful learning experience — not just for the students but also for the instructors.”

Team teaching allows each professor to better focus their energy on just one part of the course, he added.

While Rea believes team teaching nowadays is less likely to fall prey to obscure connections between different lecturers, professors risk being redundant if the syllabus is poorly planned.

“You certainly have to learn to liaise with your colleagues — you don’t want the course to be too repetitious,” Rea said.

However, faculty members have to ensure each topic is explored in the same level of detail.

Susan Villari, who teaches Nursing 503, “Contemporary Issues in Human Sexuality and Health,” reconciles this by attending all lectures taught by her fellow lecturer, Mary Guidera.

She finds that listening to lectures in the audience not only allows her to jump in with appropriate information but also allows her to better assess the effectiveness of the lecture.

“You can really see the student reaction and give each other feedback on how well students are receiving the information,” Villari said. “Team teaching gives you a way to check and balance each other especially since there are so many types of learners in a classroom.”

However, despite the recognized benefits of team teaching, the presence of more than one professor in a classroom can often frustrate students.

Last semester, College sophomore Sophie Feldman took Linguistics 001 and found the disparity in her professors’ respective teaching abilities frustrating.

“I would probably prefer to have one lecturer for the sake of consistency,” she said. “I can take better notes when I know a professor’s lecture style.”

The dynamics in Anthropology 104, “Sex and Human Nature,” however, was vastly different, observed College sophomore Kylie Gemmell.

Taught by Eduardo Fernandez-Duque and Claudia Valeggia ­— Anthropology professors who are married to one another — Gemmell found “they would often complete each other’s sentences in a way neither of them could do with their research alone.”

“They really knew their strengths academically and I benefited a lot from it,” she said.

Note: This article was updated from its original version to reflect that the co-taught linguistics course is numbered 001, rather than 100, and that Introduction to Bio-Molecular Biology Life is numbered 121, not 402.

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