Many SPS faculty collaborate as co-teachers. This allows us to offer unique courses to our adult student population due to their combined expertise. Read on to hear about some of our faculty’s experiences as co-teachers.
Alex Kerr and Shawna Mehta, Market Research
“One of the things I love about co-teaching with Shawna is that it has brought a completely new and fresh perspective to a pre-existing course. The complimentary skillset has proven invaluable to the course development and created a better overall and balanced series of content. As it relates to the student experience, having a diverse set of perspectives from a pair of practitioners I believe has created a more enriched experience for our students.” – Alex Kerr
“Ensuring full student engagement and participation is a top priority but can, at times, feel challenging while teaching an online asynchronous course. Using a co-teaching model, Alex and I are able to share our diverse yet complementary perspectives and real-world experiences with students and can expose them to different marketing research approaches and teaching styles – which I believe keeps the course fresh and engaging from module to module.
Additionally, as I am new to teaching, pairing up with Alex has been an invaluable experience for me, personally. I was able to learn “on the job” with confidence with his guidance throughout the process.” – Shawna Mehta
Eric Abbott and Andy Chang, American Health Care System
“What I enjoy most about co-teaching with Andy is how we enhance the course curriculum by leveraging each of our respective professional and academic experiences in Medical Health Informatics. This creates a dynamic environment where we both contribute our unique perspectives, and in doing so, we find that it enables an engaging and thoughtful learning atmosphere for our students.
Co-teaching benefits students by offering diverse perspectives on important course topics. With how Andy and I uniquely approach course content, students experience a variety of teaching strategies that cater to different student learning styles. Students find this very appealing, and it enriches the overall classroom experience while providing singular opportunities for personalized attention, thereby promoting greater student engagement.” – Eric Abbott
Erin Cable and Serena Klos, Fundamentals of Neurobiology
“I’ve had the opportunity to co-teach a few courses, and it’s been a wonderful experience each time! It is an opportunity to collaborate and learn from a fellow neuroscientist (and friend!). Approaching course development and instruction with a collaborative perspective I’ve found results in an overall more engaging course. And certainly, sharing the workload—especially grading—is a bonus!
I think that students gain a valuable advantage from having two instructors who bring distinct interests and experiences into the classroom. Neuroscience, like many fields, has incredibly diverse applications, experimental approaches and methodologies. Rarely do my areas of deep expertise overlap with my co-teacher’s expertise, and so we can share a complimentary set of knowledge that adds much more depth than what I could achieve independently. Students learning from multiple perspectives is essential to appreciate breadth and complexity of the field.” – Erin Cable