This is a question that I originally posted to matheducators.stackexchange.com but it was suggested that I might get some more answers here.
My department is considering using more than one lecturer (sequentially, not in parallel) to give lectures in our large first-year classes (e.g. 500 students doing engineering mathematics).
In other words, one lecturer does the first 4 weeks, a second does the next 4 weeks and a third does the remaining 4 weeks.
There is enough content of disparate nature (e.g., linear algebra, calculus of various types) to split into three distinct blocks so that each lecturer teaches a coherent block.
Is there evidence, ideally published research studies, about the effectiveness of such an arrangement, and whether the students view it favourably or otherwise.
My inability to locate for myself any research studies may be due to the large number of different meanings of the phrase "team teaching" or "joint teaching" or "co-teaching". Just to clarify, I am not talking about dividing a large class into sections, nor am I talking about two lecturers in the same class. Just the material being divided up and presented in separate blocks by different lecturers.
Given this inability to locate research studies, I am also interested in anecdotal evidence if you have any horror stories or great successes to comment on.
(My suspicion is that the precise details of who the lecturers are, and whether they are good lecturers etc is more important than the distinction between "one lecturer" and "two lecturers", but I'd like to have some evidence one way or another.)
Added in response
Thanks for all the useful responses, which lead me to believe that we can proceed with caution. In what follows, a "unit" is a 12-week class that occupies 1/4 of a student's time, what other countries call a "class" or a "course" or even a "paper" (in NZ).
In our situation, the unit's content is defined by a unit reader that was collectively written when the unit was first designed, and each lecturer would need to cover a specified set of chapters / sections from the reader.
While the contents of each lecture is not specified down to the last page, we know from previous years approximately how much can be covered in each lecture. So different lecturers cannot really deviate much from this if they are to complete the same material in the same time.
The final exam will be written, again with many years of past examples at hand, by the unit coordinator, and marked (mostly) by casual teaching assistants, to a fairly rigid rubric. So the lecturers will not really affect that.