ABSTRACT
Team-teaching pedagogy was first introduced at Cornell University in 1963 when William Alexander proposed grouping teachers into teams as part of a new educational model aimed at junior high school reform. Known today as the "father of the American middle school", Alexander advocated a new middle school unit and pedagogy to serve the unique needs of pre and early-adolescent students. Team teaching may be beneficial for introductory level courses offered through distance education, as well as for distance education courses taught by faculty new to the distance education environment. During the engineering specialties section, each instructor presented his or her discipline/subdiscipline and highlighted the work related to that field he or she had accomplished in his or her engineering practice. Material from the text was augmented with group discussions led by the team of instructors, engineering speakers, university speakers, laboratory exercises, an oral presentation project, and a culminating end-of-course research paper on a current engineering event of critical importance.
