Why start small?

• Quick to develop.
• Makes use of small investments of resources.
• Easier to approach potential collaborators with smaller ask.
• Smaller commitment by the collaborative partners.
• Fits more easily into your life.
• Provides a pilot for any future larger collaborations.
• Provides proof of concept before seeking additional funding.
• Doesn't require difficult-to-come-by resources such as large rooms.
• Can accomplish as much as some larger collaborations.
• Students are still compelled to engage with new perspectives.
• Teachers are still rewarded by fresh takes on familiar material.

A baker's dozen ways to start small collaborations

1.  Invite a colleague from another institution to give a Skype lecture.
2. Address big questions from the perspective of multiple disciplines across capstone courses
3. Link two courses through student projects on the same topics.
4. Create an assignment that makes use of expertise in another discipline (e.g. a BIO class that has its field samples analyzed by BMS students)
5. Bring in expertise from students in another discipline (e.g. bring in statistics, speech or writing advice for an assignment in another discipline)
6. Swap classes with a colleague for a week. (Find interesting intersections such as insect art in an entomology class).
7. Find an intersection between your course and the arts (e.g. bring in a cellist to demonstrate a principle of acoustics)
8. Hold co-curricular events or a limited number of discussions between two or more classes
9. Create a collection of short videos on basic topics in your discipline or across disciplines for use across introductory course sections. Using several different faculty members for these videos will have the added benefit of introducing students to more faculty.
10. Organize a debate between courses studying a topic from different perspectives (e.g. Biology and Psychology)
11. Make use of technology so that students in different places can interact remotely, such as a common discussion board.
12. Have a class act as clients for another class.
13. New faculty and their assigned mentor can collaborate on a class session or project.

Ways to find potential collaborators

Join the Teach Together community

• Search the GVSU website using "Teach Together" as your search term to find faculty who self-identified their interest in collaborative teaching.
• To see a list of the Teach Together faculty sorted by unit, see the Teach Together webpage. 
• Add the Teach Together phrase to your profile page.  Request listing on the Teach Together page via the online form.

Other ways to search

• Keyword search by topic on www.gvsu.edu
• Ask the unit head of the department in the desired collaborative discipline 
• Search by keyword in Digital Measures (request through the dean's office),
• Catalog search for relevant courses.