Co-Teaching Relationships among Librarians and Other Information Professionals

This article uses the co-teaching experiences of workshop instructors at the University of Nevada, Reno Libraries as a basis for an in-depth exploration of the factors that lead to successful co-teaching arrangements among librarians and other information professionals. The experiences of these instructors demonstrate that co-teaching can provide numerous benefits: It can enhance the learning experience for students, it can provide a method for refining teaching skills, it can promote successful collaborations across departments, and it can bring innovative ideas into the classroom. Drawing on collaboration research from the Wilder Foundation, this study found that successful co-teaching relationships are characterized by factors related to environment, partnerships, process and structure, communication, purpose, resources, and external/long-term considerations. Within these seven areas, guidelines for successful coteaching relationships have been formulated for use by librarians and other information professionals