Teaching as a team with the History Lab faculty

Last semester four faculty members from across the university taught for the first time the History Lab, a mix of creative technologies, storytelling, and regional history.

The class, led by David Hicks (School of Education), Todd Ogle (University Libraries), Paul Quigley (History), and Thomas Tucker (School of Visual Arts), culminated in an event at the Newman Library last May. That exhibit used augmented reality, digital exhibit design, and 3D printing to trace forgotten histories of the university as it celebrated its 150th anniversary.

The course created a space for students to experiment and work across disciplines, a learning experience at the core of the university’s teaching mission. For example, a team of four students created an exhibit, titled “We Acknowledge,” that combines maps, video imagery, and physical objects (including traditional food) to trace the relationship between the Monacan people and the land on the university is built. Both faculty and students found the lab rewarding but teaching a new course as a group (particularly with scholars from several programs) comes with challenges.

This summer, we spoke with Quigley, an associate professor in the Department of History and Director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, to share his experiences with faculty in the Pathways community who are considering teaching with a team of colleagues.

Here’s a few things the History Lab team learned while creating and teaching the course.

Interdisciplinary teaching comes with bureaucratic hurdles (but they can be overcome)

When creating a course with faculty from several departments it helps, Quigley says, to have a sympathetic department head and an academic advisor skilled at navigating the course’s registration process.

“I think it's just a case of finding people who are supportive and also who know how the system works,” said Quigley. “We have a fantastic academic advisor in the history department, Heath Furrow, who was really helpful.”

The instructors also received a Pathways annual grant to help fund the lab’s development and listing as a general education course.

“It's really good the university is sending a clear message this kind of course is important for Virginia Tech as an institution,” Quigley said. “It wasn't a very big course to start with and we think it will grow in the future, but we only had 22 students, so to allow us to teach a course with four instructors represents an investment in the longer-term trajectory of the lab.”

Communication is important

Once the group got into the planning and the delivery of the course, then a different set of challenges started to come up.

“Most of us are used to teaching on our own, where you have a lot of freedom and autonomy and can make changes on a week to week basis,” said Quigley. “But when you're teaching with three colleagues, communication between the four instructors is really, really crucial.”

“I think one of the things that allowed it to work so well is that the four of us are good friends and close colleagues who have worked on other projects,” he said. “It meant, not just good communication within the team, we also had a shared idea of what we want the outcome to be and what we want the students to get out of it.”

Teaching as a team doesn’t mean less work

If you’re teaching a course with three other people, one could assume it would translate to less time in the classroom. But that’s not what these instructors found.

“Teaching with three other people was definitely not 25 percent of the work of teaching a class on your own,” said Quigley. “It's basically the same amount of work as teaching alone.”

Initially the four instructors planned for one person to lead each twice-weekly class meeting , with the other instructors in supporting roles, but the group found it was counter to their underlying goal of teaching across disciplines. After a couple of weeks, they realized that they needed to have multiple instructors teaching on related topics each session.

“We realized that if we wanted our students to look for fruitful connections between technology and historical stories, we couldn’t split those topics up into separate lectures,” said Quigley. “Different instructors brought different areas of expertise and by bringing the different subjects together, not just throughout the semester, but on the same day was really valuable.”

Collaborative teaching leads to research opportunities

“This teaching experience feeds into research collaborations and vice versa,” said Quigley. “Our group has had ongoing research collaborations over the last few years. If you’re interested in collaborative research, this kind of teaching can really feed that work.”

See more information about Pathways Development Grants. The next deadline for development grants will be March 1, 2023.