Team Teaching

The differentiation between Team Teaching and courses with the participation of several lecturers is mainly given by the fact that the following descriptive characteristics are always fulfilled in the context of Team Teaching, while courses with several lecturers fulfill these characteristics only gradually, if at all.

As a rule, the lecturer team shall consist of 2 and in exceptional cases of more, but not more than 6 lecturers.

The lecturers should come from different faculties, but at least from different disciplines.
This is also to enable diversity of perspectives and methods (e.g. theory and practice), but above all to enable interdisciplinarity (diversity). Therefore, it is also unavoidable that with increasing size of the team, at least from 4 lecturers on, it is composed in a balanced way with regard to socio-economic and socio-cultural aspects (e.g. gender, ethnic origin, age).

If the team consists of two lecturers, they usually attend together 100% of all course units and conduct the course together.

In the exceptional cases in which a team consists of more than two lecturers, an aliquot division is made (2/x, x corresponds to the number of lecturers in the team), whereby at least two members of the team must always be present during a course unit.

On the one hand, this serves as a (temporal) basis for ensuring clarity of goals and methods, division of tasks, clarification of competencies, clarity of assessment and clarity of rules, and on the other hand, as evidence of the fundamental willingness to work together constantly (high relationship factor), ongoing commonality, unrestricted communication (high willingness to reflect).

The lecturers jointly conceive and are responsible for the course (description of learning outcomes, creation of a syllabus, formulation of learning outcomes, choice of didactics/methods, etc.). They conduct the course together and furthermore assess (grade) the learning outcomes/successes of the students together.

The lecturers team jointly assumes responsibility for the success of the course (keyword: evaluation) and also reflects together on the success in a documenting process, the challenges of the joint course.

In the context of pilot phase (implementation) of Team Teaching, extra funding is available for “ teaching hours” for all staff with teaching responsibilities.

Funding for the third-party funded staff, external lecturers or other staff members of Universität Innsbruck who work as lecturers, is only possible as long as one member of the team has a contract of employment with teaching duties.

When applying for Team Teaching, per course and semester hour will be assigned two “teaching proportion hours” (thus a factor x2 of semester hours), which will be then divided equally between the two team members.

Example:

Course, 2 h, lecturer X und lecturer Y (two lecturers)

Proportion of teaching hours: 4

Lecturer X = 2 h teaching assignment

Lecturer Y = 2 h teaching assignment

The course is entered in the course data management with a total of 4 teaching hours and is also to be budgeted as such.

In exceptional cases, a team can consist of more than two, but no more than six lecturers. In this case, the corresponding teaching hours are divided by the number of teachers involved and thus divided aliquot (2/x multiplied by the number of hours, where x corresponds to the number of teachers in the team).

Example:  

Course, 2 h, lecturer V, lecturer W, lecturer X, lecturer Y (four lecturers)

Proportion of teaching hours: 4

Lecturer V: 1 h teaching assignment

Lecturer W: 1 h teaching assignment

Lecturer X: 1 h teaching assignment

Lecturer Y: 1 h teaching assignment

The course is assigned a total of 4 h of teaching.

The “additional entries” for the Team Teaching (in comparison to the regular semester assignment/budgeting according to the course data management) will be financed centrally within the framework of the pilot phase. The underlying semester hour (of the “original course”) will be covered depending on the (curricular) allocation of the course either from faculty funds (approval by the dean of studies), from funds of the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching (e.g. IGK, teaching reserve) or also from Aurora funds.

The “additional assignments” resulting from the Team Teaching are to be documented in the course data management per lecturer/s in the context of the account assignment of the teaching performance. This also applies to lecturers with “all in” contracts.

Example:

Lecturer 2 hours: lecturer X, lecturer Y (overall commissioning with 4 hours)

Lecturer X 1 hour teaching performance account assignment in accordance with original event default

Lecturer X 1 hour teaching performance account assignment Aurora

Lecturer X total 2 hours teaching performance

Lecturer Y 1 hour teaching performance account assignment in accordance with original event default

Lecturer Y 1 hour teaching performance account assignment Aurora

Lecturer Y total 2 hours teaching performance

Within the pilot phase of the Aurora European Universities Alliance, the results of the reflection processes of the lecturers involved in Team Teaching, together with the (annotated) evaluation results, are to be submitted in an appropriate form to the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching as well as to the Aurora Office after completion of the course.