Are nursing classes team taught?

[johndough]

Hi! As the title says, I am curious whether or not nursing classes are taught by a team of faculty?

The program that I am on have multiple faculty teaching one nursing class. I've had more than 10 teachers teach one class because each section is taught by a faculty that specializes at that department. Adult GI = 1 teacher, Adult neuro = another different teacher, etc......

I just thought that it was not that effective because for one class, the learning material and style does not reflect throughout the whole semester. I've had team taught classes before but not like this where there's more than 10 people teaching one class, usually it's 3-4.

What are your thoughts? If you guys have this type of program, do you find it effect?

[FL_Nurse92]

I have had 3 teacher teach one class before. I had an adult/peds mixed class and there was one teacher for adult content and two for peds. I've also had just 2 teachers teach one class. I honestly hated it! 2 different teachers=2 different styles of questions. May not seem like a big deal but it is! (well to me it was lol)

[elkpark]

Different schools do it different ways. In my nursing program(s), I had some courses that were taught by a single individual, and some that were team taught. It's been the same in the programs in which I've taught. In the situations with which I've had personal experience, it seemed to work really well. You say that it seems "not that effective," but have you had the experience of having a class taught by someone who doesn't know that clinical specialty? That, too, can be "not that effective." (In fact, it can by downright scary.)

It might make a difference how the "team teaching" is done. The team-taught classes I've had (and taught) had a small number of faculty (2 or 3, not the >10 mentioned by the OP) who were accustomed to working together and planned the semester and individual class meetings as a team. All the team member faculty were in the classroom all or most of the class meetings. I've also known of (althought I haven't had, as a student) "team taught" courses in which the faculty members just divide up the topics at the beginning of the semester and each faculty person does her or his own thing, and the other faculty don't even show up for each other's classes. I can see how that might not work as well for students.

[Samm06, BSN, RN]

I just completed my Foundations of Nursing class and had two professors for the lecture portion. It was never consistent when each professor would teach their specialized material; we just showed up for class and hoped for the better professor to teach us. Sometimes we had exams that would include both professor's content taught about two different subjects, so what one professor thought was a correct answer on an exam the other may have felt was incorrect and would mark it wrong. Sometimes this was beneficial and sometimes was not. However, I did enjoy the class and the clinical portion along with it.

[augurey]

We had a team of instructors teaching our fundamentals course. There was one main instructor that taught the majority. There was another that taught the second most material. Then there were a few here and there that taught certain lectures.

Honestly, I loved it. Instructors didn't always attend each other's lectures, but it was very well organized. The material was delivered in the same fashion, but the instructor talking about the topic was very knowledgeable and was better able to answer specific questions relating to that topic.

If there were several different instructors, and it was very unorganized, I can't imagine I would've liked it. In my situation, you can tell they were very organized and kept open lines of communication with each other. I didn't find it confusing or hard to adapt to and appreciated what I could get out of it. I'm not sure if all nursing classes will be like that, but I think as long as they are organized and communicate with each other, I think I'll continue to enjoy the team teaching.