The last two decades have seen an enormous increase in the amount of information available, in the form of text documents as well as multimedia data such as images, speech and video. As a result, information retrieval (IR) has become a central topic of computer science and related disciplines and is now part of many curricula for bachelor and master programs. In this article, we outline which concepts should be integral part of IR courses depending on the orientation of the degree program (e.g. business vs. research). In addition to the theoretical content of IR courses, we also address practical considerations, based on the authors extensive experience in teaching IR. We comment on the suitability of a number of tools and systems and of different forms of teaching, including e-learning, in the IR classroom.