Co-Instructing Spotlight: “African American Literature and the Classical Tradition”
When professors James Uden and Hannah Čulík-Baird refer to co-instructing a course, they prefer to say that the course is “‘group-taught’ rather than ‘co-taught.’” In the fall 2021 semester, Uden and Čulík-Baird paired up to instruct CL200: Topics in Classical Studies, specifically African American Literature and the Classical Tradition. As listed on the BU CAS website, this course “explores the history of adaptations and allusions to antiquity in Black writers from the eighteenth century to today in a wide range of genres: poetry, essays, travel writing, novels, drama, and film.” To Čulík-Baird and Uden, the course provoked them to explore methods of learning beyond offering a series of lectures about African American Classical Studies; rather, it was a way to cultivate group-teaching, a method of cooperative learning among students, special guests, and instructors.
Neither Čulík-Baird nor Uden claims to be an expert in Black literature and tradition, so they viewed the class material “in the spirit of discovery and with a desire to learn.” Rather than acting as the sole instructors of the course, they invited several guest speakers to participate in the group-teaching experience, identifying faculty colleagues as well as graduate students with varying specializations in Black literature from the English Department and the American & New England Studies Program. In addition, Čulík-Baird and Uden believe that their students act as another crucial part of the collaborative learning process by driving the discussion in each class. These student-led discussions allowed Čulík-Baird and Uden to learn from their students and not only teach them. Using this group-teaching method, Čulík-Baird and Uden state that they often learn more about the class subject when taking up the role as a student.
In smaller humanities departments, co-instructing a course is rare due to a lack of resources, but Čulík-Baird and Uden believe that the benefits of offering co-instructed courses are enormous. Instead of having one faculty member to connect with, students in co-taught courses have “double the number of people who could act as mentors in the future.” Plus, Čulík-Baird and Uden believe that different students benefit from different teaching personalities, even though in this case, both professors specialize in the same field. According to their post-course reviews, “The students really seemed to appreciate the different teaching styles.” Even though Čulík-Baird and Uden are classicists, they acknowledge the potential for co-teaching as a means for interdisciplinary studies across different departments at BU. “In our case, we were two professors in the same department, but we can see great potential in courses co-taught by professors in different departments.”
A common misconception about co-instructed classes is the belief that each professor would put roughly half the amount of time and work into the course than they would for a course with a single instructor. Uden and Čulík-Baird note that a lot of the “heavy lifting” came in the initial course design because it was a brand-new course offering. The collaborative aspect of co-instructed courses begins even before the students enter the classroom. As they explain, Uden and Čulík-Baird felt they “benefited greatly from forming lesson plans by bouncing ideas off each other.” This degree of planning that wouldn’t necessarily be required for a solo-taught class did pay off for them: “We came at the material from different perspectives, so this allowed us to divide the course so that each of us was speaking to our strengths.” Uden and Čulík-Baird both understood when and where to relinquish control to the other, so it “certainly cut down on the day-to-day preparations.”
Co-instructing, in Čulík-Baird and Uden’s experience, gives the instructors a means of “pedagogical self-reflection” that would be very difficult to find individually. This self-reflection is gained from witnessing each other “in action” during their day-to-day instructing. When reflecting on the qualities necessary to teach a course with a fellow faculty member, they believe there must be a level of “give-and-take” that requires “mutual respect, openness to ideas, and a willingness to try different methods.” When all of these conditions are met, Čulík-Baird and Uden call co-instructing a “meaningful experience.”
Co-instructed courses were repeatedly identified as a powerful means to advance interdisciplinary teaching and curricular innovation within the College of Arts & Sciences during their recent strategic planning process. In light of this, the Dean of Arts & Sciences, Stan Sclaroff, has just announced the launch of a pilot initiative to support the development of new team-taught courses that will become regular and important offerings in the College’s undergraduate curriculum. The pilot will fund two courses to start, integrating them into the standing curriculum structures within departments and enriching interdisciplinarity through curricular innovation.