TEACHERS' VIEWS ON COLLABORATING IN MULTI-CAMPUS COURSE CLUSTER FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Abstract

At a European multi-campus university, parallel study programmes offered at every campus (e.g. engineering studies) and appurtenant courses are coordinated, to ensure similar quality and systematic development. In this paper, we present a case from such a multi-campus course, consisting of a cluster of basic courses in physics and chemistry for first-year engineering students. These courses are coordinated through identical syllabus and assessment practice but are taught locally at each campus. The authors had noted some frustration among the teachers involved in these courses, and were interested to investigate the reasons for this frustration, and ultimately to inform the development of these multi-campus courses. This project emerged from a realisation that literature on multi-campus courses is often associated with distance learning, while in this case, the actual teaching is provided locally. Concepts associated with teacher collaboration, such as collaborative culture versus contrived collegiality, collective versus fragmented collaboration, and depth of collaboration seem like a viable way forward in understanding the dynamics between teachers in a context like this. In this paper, we present early results from this ongoing project, which include interviews of teachers involved in these physics/chemistry courses. Preliminary results from these interviews suggest that the expressed frustrations stem from contrived collegiality. Although the teachers experience sufficient freedom in terms of choosing their own teaching methods, several teachers raise concerns about the lack of common aims for this course cluster, which reduces collaboration to coordination of mere practical tasks.