Co-teaching involves two instructors who collaboratively design and teach a course.  I’ve experienced this practice twice an undergraduate, but overall it’s less common in higher education. This practice could be especially important for professions like nursing or social work where it’s more common that you’re working with a team of professionals instead of individually.
 
Previous work noted that there are some potential benefits to co-teaching like students are exposed to different points of view and an enlarged knowledge base. Students also have different role models from a single course, and they can see teamwork unfold in real time. This is of course assuming that an effective co-teaching model has been constructed. If an effective co-teaching model is in place, “observing teachers interacting with one another provides a model for students on how to enter into professional relationships and to manage differences in values and opinions while maintaining mutual respect and openness” (Lock et al., 2018, p. 40). 

​I don’t consider myself a great lecturer so I try and find ways to get students to engage with the course material in different ways. In lower level classes that may mean doing readings and reading quizzes before class and then doing a short review lecture and activity. In upper level classes, I want students to take more control of the material and their learning. This summer while on twitter, I saw a tweet and then subsequent thread from Remi Kalir (@remikalir) about his use of an online annotation tool call Hypothes.is in his classes. 

​The Psychonomic Society is making great strides towards making science more accessible to the public. This became very evident to me when I attended a lunchtime workshop on Saturday, and I have to say, I was impressed. One way they’re doing this is through the featured content page on website. It was launched a little over 4 years ago, and since then they’ve posted over 400 blog-style posts covering research that’s been published in their journals. The posts are written with lay-people in mind, so the reading level wouldn’t be too tough if you were to incorporate their posts into your undergraduate curriculum. I’ll say more about that in a bit. 

At the Psychonomics conference, I attended the Women in Cognitive Science (WiCS) workshop. For those of you who don’t know, WiCS is an organization that seeks to improve the visibility of women in the field, create an environment that encourages young women to join the field, provide support and training, and assist with professional development. I’ve been a member of WiCS for a couple years now, and I always make a point to attend their workshop if I’m going to Psychonomics. In previous years, the topic of the workshop has always been useful, and I’ve taken advantage of their speed mentoring program. For someone just starting out or someone more established, there’s something to be gleaned from the meeting. 

In my post last week, I mentioned I was going to be a Twitternome at Psychonomics. I was actually given permission to post on behalf of the Psychonomic Society through their twitter account! What a great opportunity! I tagged myself in all of the tweets I posted for them, but for some reason they aren't showing up on my page. So I gather all of my tweets together here for you to see for yourself! 

​Not sure if any of our readers are going, but I’ll be headed to Psychonomics later this week in New Orleans. I’m looking forward to the conference; there are several talks and poster sessions I’m excited for. Also, I’m greatly anticipating the WiCS workshop and speed mentoring session! And I’m impatiently awaiting to eat the wonderful food that awaits! Cajun food in near and dear to my heart.