Instructional Partnerships:TeamTeaching Global Politics and the Web

Abstract

Since its beginnings in the 1960s, the bibliographic instruction program at Earlham College has facilitated strong instructional partnerships between teaching faculty and librarians. Given the growth in information sources available via the Internet, these partnerships now extend beyond the realm of traditional library instruction. One example of how this has evolved at Earlham is the two-year partnership of these authors, who have been part of a team that teaches political science students to create World Wide Web (WWW) pages reflecting topical research and analysis. Successful instructional partnerships are critical to the success of this endeavor. This article describes and evaluates how an assignment that uses the WWW to research and present a global problem was team-taught during the spring 1997 semester, paying particular attention to the instructional partnerships, and their advantages and problems. Reasons for the success of the team teaching methods are discussed.