Teacher collaboration for successful presentation planning, Blair Barr and Michael Hetherton

In this joint poster presentation we set out to demonstrate how, in the face of different experiences teaching mandatory English communication courses at a medium – sized university, our unique approaches were adapted based on weekly collaboration between teachers. While we were both tasked with the same mission to guide our learners through 24 hours of taught content over 2 months resulting in a presentation derived from a small array of pre-determined topics, our approaches differed, but evolved over the four terms of collaboration. Blair favoured the use of frameworks and digital tools such as Google Forms to manage learner accountability while groups answered their own questions critically, whereas Michael relied heavily on more traditional elements of psycholinguistics such as Vygotsky’s notion of the need to provide learners with interactive, scaffolded tasks that promote a can – do effect for the students. Despite the divergent paths taken, we conclude that, through weekly discussions, we constructed an effective and professionally creative collaboration on campus.