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Building Bridges: Interdisciplinary Team-Teaching
Topics: Geography Education
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Keywords: team-teaching, interdisciplinary, challenges Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract Day: Monday Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) Room: Virtual 50
Authors:
Heike Alberts, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Laurence Carlin, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
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Abstract
Team-taught interdisciplinary courses provide many academic benefits, such as fostering critical thinking, encouraging students to make connections, and opening students’ minds. However, they also present some challenges for both professors and students, in particular when the participating academic disciplines are quite different from one another (as in our freshmen seminar on food which combines philosophy and geography). Based on our experiences of team-teaching the class six times and our survey of two cohorts of students in three different team-taught freshmen seminars we discuss the benefits and challenges of inter-disciplinary team-taught classes. We contend that the degree of difference between the disciplines combined in a class might place restrictions on the choice of a team-teaching model. Contrary to what some authors have stated, we argue that there is no best team-teaching model, but that each one comes with different challenges and rewards. We end with some observations why the discipline of geography is particularly well-suited to interdisciplinary team-teaching and share some advice for instructors who want to build bridges between academic disciplines.