Curriculum Development Instruments

Teacher/Faculty Interviews

Instrument 1: Faculty Interview Protocol

Project: Anonymous 3

Funding Source: NSF: Course and Curriculum Development (DUE)

Purpose: To assess faculty collaboration

Administered To: Participating mathematics faculty

Topics Covered:

• Attitudes & Beliefs (Teacher/Faculty): collaboration
• Comparisons: collaboration, student impact
• Course Evaluation: areas for program improvement, implementation, integration, objectives, organization
• Impact on Outcomes: instructional practices, student attitudes, student understanding, teacher interest, teacher skills
• Impact Variables: collaboration, project involvement
• Implementation Activities: assessment, collaboration, curriculum/materials development, methods use, recruitment
• Lesson/Curriculum Plan: integration, methods, objectives
• Limitations & Barriers: implementation
• Perceptions (Teacher/Faculty): implementation, student attitudes, student impact
• Plans & Expectations (Teacher/Faculty): project impact, project implementation
• Self-Assessment (Teacher/Faculty): content knowledge, interest
• Background Characteristics & Activities (Teacher/Faculty): education, experience, prior practice, purpose for participation

Format/Length: 42 open-ended questions, 24 pre-course, 18 post-course

Introduction.   As you know, I am conducting an ethnography of the collaborating faculty in the MATC grant. While collaboration in research is common at the college level, collaborative teaching is much less so. As a result, we know very little about faculty collaboration, about what contexts and strategies increase the likelihood of a rewarding experience and which diminish it. The Math Across the Curriculum project offers an opportunity to research collaborative teaching and make the findings available to other college faculty. While the experiences and reflections of faculty are the substance of this research, no individual's remarks will be presented in a way that would allow their identity to be determined.

Background  First I would like to learn about your teaching experience.

1. How long have you been teaching?
2. How much of that time has been spent at college?

Motivation  Now I'd like to learn about why you decided to teach this particular course as a member of a team.

3. Have you ever taught collaboratively before?

   if yes...	Could you describe that experience for me?
   	Did your previous experience influence your decision to undertake this course? In what way?
   if no...	Do you have any preconceptions about what collaborative teaching is like?
   	Did they influence your decision to undertake a collaborative/interdisciplinary course?

4. Why did you decide to teach this course as a collaborative/interdisciplinary course?
5. How as the teaching team for this course formed?

6. What is the purpose of integrating mathematics/material from another discipline into this course?

   Prompt:

   Do you see mathematics in this instance as a tool for doing the other subject better or as a mode of thought, another way of looking at the subject and the world?

7. Exactly where and how will the integration of disciplines occur?

   Prompt:

   In daily presentation of course content? In lecture-by-lecture juxtaposition? In whose heads are the disciplines united – professors, students, or both?

8. A priori, how do you expect responsibilities for the course will be organized?
   • In terms of commanding the material (i.e., how much of your collaborator's material do you expect to understand when the course begins)?
   • In terms of classroom time and presenting material?
   • In student assessment?
9. How would you describe your interest and abilities in the subject of your collaborator (e.g., mathematics for an historian)?

Goals.  Finally, I'd like to know about your expectations for this course.

10. How do you expect the students to benefit from the collaborative/interdisciplinary approach in this course?
11. How do you expect to benefit from this collaboration?
12. What do you expect will be the most challenging aspects of collaboration?
13. What do you expect will be the most rewarding?
14. What outcomes will persuade you that this course is a success?
15. Is there anything else about this course you would like to talk about?

Introduction.  My purpose in this interview is to understand more about collaborative teaching at the college level. Since this is an area about which very little is known, I am interested to find out about your experience, the difficulties you encountered as well as the rewards, in the hope of constructing a picture of the activity that will be useful for others. As I pointed out in the pre-course interview, no individual's remarks will be presented in a way that would allow their identity to be determined.

Course Structure.  Because collaborative courses can take many different forms, I'd like to find out how you structured the course you just finished teaching.

1. How would you describe your method of collaboration?
   • How was course planning accomplished? Why did you decide to do it this way?
   • How were classroom responsibilities organized? Why did you choose to do it this way?
   • Did you discuss pedagogical issues directly in your planning sessions? If so, what issues did you discuss?
   • How was student assessment handled? Why did you choose this way?
2. Did these relationships change over the duration of the course?
   If so, did you actively decide to alter things or did they just shift?
3. How do you feel, in retrospect, about this way of structuring the course?
4. Did integrating content from math and science pose any special planning challenges?
   Please describe them.

Student reaction.  Now I would like to get your assessment of the students' response to the course.

5. How did students respond to having more than one professor in the classroom?
   • Did their reaction change from the beginning to the end of the course?
6. [For mathematicians] Compared to your other courses, how would you describe the students' response to the mathematics in the course? Do you think the interdisciplinary approach made a difference to their learning?
   [For others] Compared to your courses which don't include any/much mathematics, how would you describe the students' response to your subject? Do you think the interdisciplinary approach made a difference to their learning?

Rewards and Drawbacks.  Now I'd like to get your assessment of the value to you of teaching a course like this.

7. Were there satisfactions about collaborative teaching? Were there frustrations?
8. Has teaching this course collaboratively changed the way you teach other courses?
9. Have your interest and abilities in the subject of your collaborator (i.e., mathematics for an historian) changed as result of teaching this course?
10. What advice would you give to a novice collaborator to help them get the most out of a collaborative teaching experience?
11. In what circumstances do you feel a collaborative approach is most likely to succeed?
12. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about your experience with the course that I haven't asked you about?