Title: Podcast transcript: Team teaching and joint content production
Course: Producing Micro Content in a Team (Digivisio 2030) > Section: How to Produce Micro Content in a Team?

The discussion participants are Coordinator Hannele Rajaniemi from the University of Jyväskylä and two university teachers, Jessica Hurme and Jaana Tikkala from Movi (Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication).

Hannele Rajaniemi: Welcome to this Digivision 2030 project training themed on micro content production and high-quality media production as team work. In this podcast, we look at the theme from the perspective of team teaching and joint content production. I am Hannele Rajaniemi from the University of Jyväskylä, and my guests are two teachers from Movi, Jessica Hurme and Jaana Tikka. Thank you for joining us in this discussion.

Jaana Tikkala: Thank you.
Jessica Hurme: Thanks.

Hannele Rajaniemi: To begin with, can you describe shortly Movi as a unit and the work you do?

Jaana Tikkala: At Movi, or the Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication, we develop and organise communication and language studies for degree students, personnel members and people in working life alike. Our aim is to develop multilingual communication skills to as high a standard as possible and, this way, to promote the university's internationalisation and the implementation of its language policy.

Hannele Rajaniemi: It seems that you have been using the team teaching approach for quite some time at Movi. What does team teaching mean and how do you organise it in practice?

Jaana Tikkala: For us, team teaching means that we plan and also teach our courses together with other language and communication teachers. The basic premise of these courses has been developing the learner's communication skills holistically towards personal expertise.

Jessica Hurme: For example, rather than teaching public speaking or team work skills in Swedish, Finnish and English on different courses, we aim for overall development of skills. The learning assignment of a course could be carrying out a project, where the concept paper is written in Swedish, the actual plan in Finnish and the pitches in English. This means that responsibility for improving the learners’ skills is shared between the whole team of teachers, from planning to guiding the learner's learning and teaching topic contents.

Jaana Tikkala: The practical organisation of team teaching is based on teachers having a sufficient number of team meetings, where they can plan the course and the teaching together. Of course, sometimes it also means that several teachers may be present in the same teaching situation. For example, you need not only English teachers but also communication and interaction teachers to analyse English group discussions. At the joint meetings of the organisation, we have also structured learning outcomes together and looked at learning assignments and study paths. They need not all be identical, but we aim for appropriate coherence. In addition, the teams responsible for teaching students of business studies and sports programmes, for example, spar each other regarding the topic contents of courses and the methods of delivering teaching.

Hannele Rajaniemi: Sounds interesting. What is your personal experience of team teaching like? What is best about it, and what do you find challenging?

Jaana Tikkala: Perhaps the best thing about it is that we can combine the expertise of specialists in different fields, both in planning and developing those courses. Team work also certainly inspires you to try and reach the shared goals. At best, we even get into a flow state in the planning and development work. When several teachers are present, the number of ideas naturally multiplies, which can be both good and bad. On the other hand, we can also look at the ideas with several pairs of critical eyes, helping us to pick out the best ones and hone them for practical use.

Jessica Hurme: And if we think about the challenges, team teaching naturally challenges the teachers' cooperation and negotiation skills, as achieving a successful learning module requires of every teacher time, effort and willingness to work together. I would say that, especially at the beginning, team teaching also requires adaptation to joint practices and also preparedness to look at your own pedagogical approach critically. And argumentation skills are also needed in cooperation, as well as flexibility and adapting to the decisions that have been made regarding the content and implementation methods. At Movi, each teacher participates in several teacher teams and courses simultaneously, and sometimes keeping on top of things can be a challenge.

Hannele Rajaniemi: If we think about content production in teams of several teachers, you both have produced online implementations for not only degree students but also continuous learning. Could you first tell us what types of contents you have produced together, and how?

Jaana Tikkala: We have produced together entire courses with teaching materials in form of both videos and visual and written self-study materials. The learners can mull over these materials online or face to face in different applied learning assignments, depending slightly on the course. Usually we have a common thread, a central learning assignment, which involves several skill sets. We then come up with smaller partial assignments, exercises whose objectives aim for managing the larger learning assignment.

Jessica Hurme: And active cooperation is how we have managed to produce these courses in practice, starting from coming up with the ideas. We have had many discussions and also paid attention to documenting them carefully, enabling us to come back to them together. We have done a lot work together, but we always also break down the overall goal into smaller parts, which we then work on independently. After this, it is easier to come together again and evaluate the results of our work, and then develop the ideas further. Different working methods that support visuality and structuring your thoughts have also helped us with thinking together, including the ABC model, or simply different types of methods relying on post-its.

Hannele Rajaniemi: Which tools or facilities here at the University of Jyväskylä have you used?

Jessica Hurme: We have taken a hybrid approach to using remote teaching technology and the facilities. And simply the different learning environments and systems of the university. For example, we have used Moodle and all of its functionalities a lot, and Zoom and Moniviestin have naturally also seen a lot of action. Sometimes we have also visited the filming and recording studios to make videos. We have a great deal of expertise in online pedagogy, different technologies and accessibility in Movi’s teacher teams, which has of course been a big advantage when producing courses. The Digital Services have, however, always provided support and help if we have not found the solution to a problem within the team.

Hannele Rajaniemi: What should you remember in this type of joint content production? What are the challenges that you should anticipate and plan carefully for in advance?

Jaana Tikkala: In joint content production, it is particularly important to agree on shared practices. To agree on where and how you will communicate, how you will document your meetings as Jessica Hurme said earlier, and where you will store materials and ideas so that all team members can access the information they need. It is also important to agree on joint meetings that take place often enough. Even if you do work independently between the meetings, in the team you can benefit from feedback interaction in different work phases. Project management has been quite important for us. This means that in joint content production, it is especially important that the different phases are scheduled and that you also keep to the schedules.

Hannele Rajaniemi: You already mentioned the ABC method. This is a learning design tool that you can use to produce a handy visual manuscript for the learning path. Could you tell us about your experiences of this method, and if you would recommend it to others?

Jessica Hurme: Yes, our experiences of this method have been positive. We find that it has speeded up our work and made it more efficient in the sense that the teacher team no longer needs to separately negotiate on how we will move on in this work process and which methods we will use. The ABC method kind of creates a framework for the work, enabling the team to get quickly down to the actual task, or planning the course. We have always documented the plans in Flinga or other similar systems, or perhaps adapted the original method a bit in a certain way to suit us, enabling us to continue the planning at a different time as a team. And yes, my recommendation is that everyone should get to know the ABC model and see if they could somehow adapt it to their needs.

Hannele Rajaniemi: To conclude, which thoughts would you like to highlight for teachers who are interested in team teaching or joint content production?

Jaana Tikkala: We would like to strongly encourage you to take up team teaching and joint content production, as it can be really rewarding at best, and we think that the quality of the end result you achieve is slightly higher when you have several pairs of eyes on it. At the same time, you can learn from others and about yourself and your competence. And perhaps you should also remember that it is important to have resources for planning and producing the content. We have been lucky to have this great opportunity to get resources for the planning, without which starting from square one or while doing your other work could be quite stressful.

Hannele Rajaniemi: Jessica Hurme and Jaana Tikkala, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.
Jaana Tikkala: Thank you.
Jessica Hurme: Thanks.