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Effects of Multiple Instructors

Publication:

Jones, F., S. Harris, 2012, "Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Multiple Instructors to Teach Single Courses, 2012, College Teaching, Vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 132-139.

Questions or Goals

  1. What makes having multiple instructors in a single course effective? 
  2. What drawbacks are there to having multiple instructors? 

Implementation

At the end of Spring term, 2009, we asked students in five courses to respond to the following two open-ended questions:

1.  Please comment on how having multiple instructors makes this a MORE effective course for you.
2.  Please comment on how having multiple instructors makes this a LESS effective course for you.

At the end of Fall term 2009 we asked slightly modified questions, and we asked if multiple instructors was generally and advantage or disadvantage.

A full report on this work is now available, including an executive summary. See "Products" below.

People (contacts)

Progress

Products (papers, presentations, etc)

Intentions

Our aim is to see whether student perceptions of multiple instructors differ in these different formats, and, if so, what is happening in the different formats that makes it more or less effective.  We plan to be able to make recommendations regarding how to make a multiple-instructors model work best for students.

Anticipated benefits to undergraduate learning

Recommendations about optimal implementation practices when a course has multiple instructors will affect all courses the use or plan to use multiple instructors.