Team Teaching a Credit Class

Abstract

The library instruction program at Indiana University-South Bend (IUSB) is much like programs at most other universities. The freshman study skills class and the freshman writing class have required library components in which the librarians introduce the basics of academic library research. Upper level and graduate classes have instruction only upon the request of the individual instructors. While we occasionally have the luxury of seeing a class two times in a semester, the majority of instruction is "one-shot." We also offer occasional workshops open to any student, and our reference-byappointment allows more in-depth instruction for an individual. While assessment of our instruction program shows that students do benefit from our efforts, students often ask how they could learn more. For quite some time we had considered offering a credit course, but we had not been able to free up one individual's time to develop and teach it, and none of the librarians wanted to take on all of the additional work alone. After much discussion, we eventually decided to team teach the course using all of the instruction librarians (who are also most of our reference librarians). In the spring of 1996, we began teaching a one credit-hour course called "Library Resources and Skills" offered through the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS). This article describes the process we used in planning, teaching, and revising the course since its inception.