Key Information
It Works for Us, Collaboratively!: Shared Tips for Effective Collaboration, By Hal Blythe & Charlie Sweet
2006 [ISBN: 1-58107-118-3; 144 pages; 7 1/4 x 9 3/4 inch; softcover] $17.95
“Collaborating is a highly effective skill we develop and use throughout our lives … until we become faculty.” Thus the authors begin their journey into yet another in their popular “It Works” series that include:
- It Works for Me! Shared Tips for Teaching
- It Works for Me, Too! More Shared Tips for Teaching
- It Works for Me, Online! Shared Tips for Online and Web-Enhanced Teaching
Everyone in the following pages—the authors’ collaborators—has found some area of academia that has been improved through the use of collaboration. The book begins by presenting some general tips about collaboration, then moves to more specific experiences: faculty-faculty, faculty-student, and faculty-community. Those areas are broken down into designing and teaching classes, writing for publication, developing learning communities, and university-community partnerships.
The emphasis in this book, as well as in the authors’ previous three in the series, is on the practical, not the theoretical. The various authors share real-world academic experiences that have truly worked for them and others.
If you have read Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet’s other titles in the “It Works” series, you know you will profit from this new title. If you have not, now is the time to begin!
Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet have each won the prestigious Acorn Award, which is annually presented to the best college professor in the state of Kentucky.
The Contents
INTRODUCTION
1. GENERAL TIPS ON COLLABORATION
Philosophy
>Why Collaborate?
>Traits for a Successful Collaboration
>Lessons in Effective Collaboration
>Let Them Eat Soup
Guidelines
>Finding, Freeing, and Making Time for Collaborative Work
>Techniques for Forming Long-Lasting Collaborations
>Shaken Not Stirred
>Some “Individual” Rules Apply for Team Collaboration
>Collaboration in Advocacy
2. FACULTY-FACULTY COLLABORATION
Combining Classes/Students
>Two Heads Are Better Than One
>Crossing Traditional Boundaries
>Synchronous Assignment>Asynchronous Classes
>Linking General Education Courses to Increase Student Engagement
>Facilitating Transfer of Learning from One Class to the Next
>Paper Cycles
>The Salem Witch Trials
>Producing the Department Newsletter
>Faculty Collaboration to Enhance Instructional Effectiveness
>Meeting the Other
>The County Fair as a Tool for Cultural Learning
>Learning to Teach or Teaching to Learn?
Designing and Teaching Classes Together
>Total Team Teaching
>The Team Approach to Designing & Developing Instruction for Online Learning
>Collaborating Teaching in Technical Writing and Occupational Science
>Course Development Collaboration Across Colleges
>Similarities and Differences in Effective Collaborative Partnerships
>The Development of a Collaborative Online Class in Creative Problem Solving
Collaborative Writing
>Collaborwriting
>Creative Collaboration
>A Collaboration Writing Exercise
Learning Communities
>Building Faculty Learning Communities in Ten Easy Steps
>Learning Communities That Foster Collaboration
>Using Teaching and Learning Collaboratives for Faculty Development
Across-Unit Collaboration
>Collaborating with Librarians on Assignments and Resources
>Library Instruction
>The NOVA>Library Collaboration Project
>Faculty and Librarians Working Together to Improve Students’ Research Skills
>Integrating Collaboration in a Library Media Graduate Program
>The Writing Lab as a Valuable Collaborative Resource
>Collaboration Across Disciplines
>We’re in This Together
>The Teaching & Learning Center
3. FACULTY-STUDENT COLLABORATION
Arts and Humanities
>Faculty-Student Collaboration in Arts and Humanities
>Developing an Undergraduate Project into a MAT Thesis for an Art Education >Major
>Making Art History Classes More Creative and Exciting
Nursing
>A Multipurpose Tool to Connect My Online Nursing Students
>Connecting to the Real World of Nursing Through Collaboration
Other Disciplines
>A Social Work Grading Scheme
>Student Organizations: Pathways for Student and Faculty Collaboration
>Student Poster Presentations as a Venue for Personal and Professional Growth
>Student Publications & Presentations in Science – Writing the Abstract as a Model in Teaching Scientific Writing
4. FACULTY-COMMUNITY COLLABORATION
>Win, Win, Win, Win
>Keeping Lines of Communication Strong
>Don’t Try to be God
>Collaborating with Community through Service-Learning
>Engaging Students and Community in High Quality Collaborative Learning Without >Overloading the Teacher
AFTERWORD
The Authors
Hal Blythe, Ph.D., is a Foundation Professor of English at the Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY. He has authored three non-fiction books dealing with writing and over 100 critical scholarly articles. He has ghost-written over 30 Mike Shayne novellas and over 100 short stories in popular magazines to include Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Woman’s World. He also has produced seven television scripts for EKU-TV’s Keys to Communication Series, and over 25 articles in Writer’s Digest dealing with pedagogy.
Charlie Sweet, Ph.D., is a Foundation Professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University. He formerly taught at Florida State University.