The value of the one-credit research course is extensive if you can answer the following questions. Can you really accomplish anything in 14 hours?  What can students learn in a course that only meets for fifty minutes a week?  How do you effectively teach a survey course?  What topics do you decide to cover?  These questions and more were all raised when we converted our long-ago abandoned three-credit Advanced Legal Research (ALR) to something we believed students be more interested in and ultimately, learn and retain more necessary skills.

The metamorphosis of our for-credit teaching began with some training by our Director of Instructional Support who taught us the value of thinking through our learning outcomes and how we would plan to engage our students.  This process has allowed us to develop courses that are narrow in scope and let the students learn practical research skills that can help them in required internships and as new practicing attorneys.  And while there are wildly different teaching styles, creating a template for everyone to follow encourages consistency while still allowing for academic freedom.  It’s important for students to know that when they sign up for an elective taught by a librarian, there will be an appropriate level of work tied to a corresponding level of assessment.  The end result is content that is both learned and retained as the student moves out into the real world.

So in the past few years, we have had a number of changes moving us to the success of our offerings.  During the initial phase of Covid, courses were moved online.  It has more recently been decided that most electives will stay that way.  Students from both campuses are more apt to enroll in courses that encouraged more enrollment.  So, our current setup has helped us conclude that there are a number of benefits to the one-credit approach at this time.

  1. We can cover a more narrow topic in depth.  Our current roster covers specific state legal research, CALR, and administrative law.  These 14-hour snapshots of these topics provide the students with plenty of detail to be more effective in research versus the general broad brush overview they currently receive in their research and writing courses.
  2. As electives, these courses are taught at a time when they are most helpful to students.  Nearing graduation, students find value in course material that they can often immediately put to actual use. Nothing is more valuable than students who can tout the importance of the class and skills learned to others.
  3. These courses are completely online.  Using Canvas and Webex allows us to regularly use guest speakers that do not have to be on campus.  Our content focuses on the digital and online world but also touches on print as additional examples.  Setting up a well-planned online course allows all librarians to teach with minor updates and modifications in successive semesters.
  4. Our advanced legal research courses are skill-approved courses that go towards a three-credit minimum requirement for graduation.  This means that sometimes students enroll in a class just for the credit, but we have increased enrollment and usually garner great reviews for both our teaching and content.
  5. Assignments are practical and skill-based.  This is a significant deviation from traditional ALR courses.  Gone is the cumbersome research guide or variation of it.  Our one-credit courses have weekly assignments often based on current legal issues.  Quizzes and the submission of screenshots reflect their learned knowledge during the entire course.  A final project is based on a modern-day version of a research plan.  

In today’s quick-paced, short-attention-span world, the goal for law librarians as educators is to give students something that will be of value to them when they are practicing law.  They need to be able to efficiently use databases beyond Lexis and Westlaw.  They need to be able to read a fact pattern and discern what really needs to be researched.  Finally, they need to be able to effectively share the information they find with their clients, or in this case, their classmates and the professor.  Practical, skill-based one-credit ALR classes can increase the visibility of reference librarians.  If you have graduate programs, consider one-credit electives in those topics that are open to all students.  A room full of students eager to learn about a particular topic can make the course even more enjoyable to teach.  

Non-academic librarians, do not disregard this post as something you cannot use. Creating modules for a 14-hour training program is something that can easily benefit your patrons. It can be set up in a way that is either live or completely asynchronous. Think of all the possibilities. Once you are set up, you have created training that is good for years to come with minor tweaks and updates.

If you do not currently have one credit classes in your teaching lineup, consider the possibility.  You could even take a current two or three-credit course and redesign it allowing for the course to be broken down into clear components that focus on just a few topics.  Again, this allows students to see the big picture of a more detailed approach to a topic. Advanced legal research does not have to be a rehash of what was on the research and writing checklist.  One credit courses allow you to take advantage of offering what the students most need for success in both their third year of classes and in the real world. The value of such a course to the library and the law school is the content that ultimately benefits students.