Collaborative course design in higher education: A team learning perspective

Emerging teaching methods in higher education, such as problem-, and challenge-based learning require university teachers to collaborate more when designing and teaching courses. However, the shift towards teamwork can be challenging for them. In this dissertation, the collaborative course design process of university teachers was explored from a team learning perspective.

The first study was a quantitative field study among 108 university teacher teams. The joint influence of intra- and inter-team learning on self-perceived and student-rated team performance were explored in a path model. The results showed that adaptive intra-team learning positively influenced self-perceived team performance, while transformative intra-team learning positively influenced externally rated team performance. Moreover, intra-team and inter-team learning were found to be both a constructive and a destructive combination.

Subsequently, we zoomed in on the process of team learning by transcribing and analysing 25 team meetings of 10 different teacher teams. Automated coding and sequential analysis techniques were used to quantitatively map the interactional sequences that characterize different team learning behaviors (sharing, co-construction and constructive conflict) and different types of wrap-ups. The second study showed that team learning mostly occurred through cumulative question asking and answering instead of through consecutive argumentation. Elaborate question answering and reasoning towards conclusions resulted relatively often in an expression of agreement (wrap-up).

In the third study, process mining and qualitative case analysis yielded insight into the topics discussed and agreements reached over the course of discussions occurring within the meetings and the course of team meetings over the design cycle. Results showed that, similar to other educational contexts, organizational topics and the design process itself were highly frequent topics and central in the chain of discussions. Combined with the fact that explicit agreement was reached in only about half of the discussions (52%), this points towards a pragmatic design approach.

All in all, this dissertation has contributed to higher education research and practice by mapping the collaborative course design process of university teachers. Next to that, the use of sophisticated quantitative analytic techniques in this dissertation added a valuable layer of information to our knowledge of team learning dynamics.