Rolling it up: The Evolution of an Information Literacy Assessment Plan
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ARL Library Assessment Conference Proceedings 2012 -- https://www.academia.edu/9178258/The_A-Team_Making_a_Plan_Come_Together_Across_Campus
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Rolling it up: The Evolution of an Information Literacy Assessment Plan
- 1. A tiered assessment approach from Mason Library, Keene State College Keene New Hampshire Elizabeth Dolinger Information Literacy Librarian presented at ARL Assessment Conference 2012
- 2. ~4,900 undergrads, ~100 graduate, ~800 continuing education students SAT scores 1350-1640 “Integrative Studies” general education
- 3. 8 full-time faculty librarians teaching 250-330 information literacy sessions year
- 4. SAILS Information Literacy instruction session(s) Information Literacy gained from “life experiences” ? ? ? Feedback forms from sessions
- 5. Tier 1: Campus IL Informs IL curriculum & method of instruction National Student Engagement Test Department Assessment Reports Collegiate Learning Assessment Rubric assessment in gen ed & departments Campus Map of SLOs
- 6. Tier 2: Mason Library’s IL Instruction Data on faculty supported Data on use of CMS & Libguides Tracking IL outcomes @ reference desk Informs IL curriculum & method of instruction Classroom Assessment Techniques Identification of IL SLO’s for every session Rubric Assessment Informs gen ed & department curriculum & method of IL instruction
- 7. National Student Engagement Test Department Assessment Reports Collegiate Learning Assessment Rubric assessment in gen ed & departments Campus Map of SLOs Data on faculty supported Data on use of CMS & Libguides Tracking IL outcomes @ reference desk Classroom Assessment Techniques Identification of IL SLO’s for every session Rubric Assessment Tier 2 Tier 1
- 8. Community of Practice •IL Curriculum Map •Identify Department Outcomes •Identify instruction delivery models Upper Level Taskforce •Frequent meetings focused on problem solving & tasks •2 day workshop on pedagogy •Curriculum design •CATs: Performance assessments •Pedagogy for 1st year students ITW/IQL Core Taskforce
- 9. Pilot pre-test in foundation courses Develop online modules to reinforce learning Develop IL lines on rubrics for foundation courses Continue work with departments to identify courses to explicitly develop students’ IL Help librarians to assess assignments and improve the opportunity for IL development
Editor's Notes
- My name is Elizabeth Dolinger and I’m the Information Literacy Librarian at Keene State College in Keene NH and I’ve been at Keene since the middle of 2010.
- Keene State College is a small public liberal arts college located in south western NH Primarily a residential college with a majority of 1st generation college students General education program is based on the Association of American Colleges & Universities LEAP initiative = Liberal Education & America’s Promise So the gen ed program identifies information literacy as 1 of 7 intellectual skills student learning outcomes
- Since 2009, Approx 80% of IL instruction occurred in 100-200 level courses Librarians teach sessions in both of the foundation general education courses: Integrative Thinking & Writing (ITW) & Integrative Quantitative Literacy (IQL)
- In response to administrative push for assessment plans, in 2008 the library began to administer the SAILS COHORT test (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy) COHORT. They administered the test for a total of three years from 2008, 2009, 2010 to freshman and then to juniors in spring 2010. The thought had been that they could compare scores between the years. HOWEVER the cohort test is designed to compare your students to students at other institutions and really is better used as a benchmark test of each year rather than to compare your own students to your own students. Other challenges were that the test and its scoring changed from the first time the test was given in 2008 to the 2010 test given to juniors. The test given to juniors compared them to a benchmark of mostly freshman. SO THERE WAS A LEARNING CURVE FOR THE LIBRARIANS ABOUT SAILS AND ITS PURPOSE By 2011, Librarians were looking for assessment to: Inform curricular changes and teaching practice Help identify areas for new initiatives To help students learn!! There was no feedback given to students via SAILS. FEEDBACK is often overlooked as librarians, because we don’t often have the opportunity to follow through in one shot sessions, but providing feedback is really an essential part of student learning because it allows for students to recuperate from mistakes.
- So for 2011 a new assessment plan evolved and I refer to it or describe it as “tiered model”. The tiers are really just a way of thinking about the organization of assessment efforts and communicating with librarians and others, maybe less familiar with library assessment, about how their efforts in the classroom can effect IL instruction and assessment within the whole gen ed program or department. So this is tier 1. Tier 1: Captures information literacy skill development from a variety of experiences, over a period of time from across campus departments and the general education program. Information literacy from “life experiences” Non point source This is where benchmark efforts like SAILS would appear and assessments available on campus that could be utilized because they include elements of IL While it helps to create the picture of IL development on campus, it is also informing the IL curriculum and method of instruction= face-to-face, faculty development efforts, or online etc.,
- This is the second tier and this is where librarians spend most of their focus. There’s a lot going on here… The goal of the second assessment tier, is focused on the Library's Information Literacy Program, It is meant to capture the contribution of librarian led instruction to the development of student’s information literacy skills. The major focus in this level is on identifying IL student learning outcomes in every session taught and collecting performance assessments AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK to students. Though assessing student work is often challenging for librarians because we aren’t typically giving assignments OR seeing the final products of learning. BUT as Thomas Angelo and K. Patricia Cross describe in their book Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers that classroom assessment “is particularly useful for checking how well students are learning at those initial and intermediate points, and for providing information for improvement when learning is less than satisfactory.” Angelo and Cross, 4. SO librarians are actually positioned particularly well to conduct formative classroom assessments because they are working with students during the process of completing assignments, at the intermediary point. Performance assessments allow librarians to provide feedback to students and facilitate the opportunity for students to recuperate from mistakes prior to the completion of the final product. so it’s really got to be a focus for librarians In practice, because each librarian works with hundreds of students per semester the expectation of giving feedback to each student individually is impractical. Therefore the feedback provided by librarians to students is usually in aggregate, about their class as a whole, with the skills identified that proved challenging for the students. The performance assessments are usually anonymous but allow for students to see the work of their peers and measure their own learning against their peers. The librarians help classroom faculty by informing them of what skills need to be reinforced after the session. Reviewing student work after the sessions (as opposed to at the end of the project) and providing feedback to students allows students the opportunity to improve before their final product is done and graded. Due to the volume and variety of student work being collected from the sessions librarians developed a common performance assessment to be used across sections of the same course = repetition of reviewing same artifact = librarians get efficient at assessing the artifact and providing feedback in aggregate to the class and the faculty AT THE END OF THE SEMSTER, the artifacts from all of the sessions are sampled, librarians engage in norming sessions, and assess the artifacts more formally using a common rubric. These results are then used in conjunction then with the results from assessment at the general education and department level. For the LIBRARIANS They identified common expectations of student learning and their instruction became more explicitly about developing critical thinking about information rather than about specific tools. Other things going on in this tier that informs instruction in the classroom are: tracking the faculty and outcomes that librarians provide support for assignments or courses but do not engage in face to face instruction with, tracking IL outcomes at the reference desk, and data on the use of links in a courses management system and libguides, particularly for courses where we are not doing face to face instruction.
- This slide reflects how the two tiers connect and how we try to roll up our assessment efforts to the institution or general education level… the information we are gathering in tier 2 is informing the curriculum and assessment in tier 1 either by developing lines on rubrics used in gen ed courses or IL being assessed in a department and by IL appearing on the SLO map of intellectual skills. Results from assessing student performance are shared with faculty and coordinators of the general education foundation courses. Information literacy instruction for these courses is being revised accordingly, resulting in more variety of methods of delivery being considered (more online, IQL streamlined assignment). After one year of identifying which information literacy skills were taught for individual courses the campus curriculum map now reflects where information literacy is being explicitly developed and more importantly, where it is not. Next steps are to identify courses where information literacy is being developed without instruction from librarians (via Bb links and LibGuides use). We are beginning to use data from LibGuides, Bb and through faculty we support as liasions to approach and work with departments, and next steps will be to see how materials used there are impacting student learning. The Collegiate Learning Assessment provides information on students’ critical thinking and department assessment reports are used to identify challenges departments are finding in student learning. Librarians use this information to make the case for explicitly developing critical thinking through information literacy instruction and to identify and approach departments to provide support and design information literacy curriculum.
- So how did we implement this change in thinking and practice of assessment, specifically getting librarians to collect performance assessments in all of their IL sessions for gen ed courses? Librarians engaged in 2 separate taskforces for one year which resulted in the development of a community of practice. One taskforce focused on exploring upper level instruction opportunities and documenting information literacy student learning outcomes and designing curriculum and support to reach those goals. The other task force focused on developing a common curriculum for the two foundation gen ed courses and designed methods to collect evidence of student learning. Over the course of the year, through a series of problem solving meetings and a two-day workshop on backwards design and assessment, Librarians discussed teaching methods with librarians with similar teaching practices and challenges This helped librarians to address concerns and design lesson plans and assessments that remain authentic to their individual teaching styles. The taskforces served as a training ground to learn outcomes-based teaching and assessment methods, try them in a shared learning group, and then transfer the applications to other sessions. After one year of collecting performance assessments from the sessions for the two foundation courses ITW and IQL, librarians are now beginning to engage in designing performance assessments for courses outside of the foundation courses to learn more about student learning, provide feedback to students and to faculty, and departments. SO the community of practice that developed among the librarians helped to “develop a unique perspective on their topic as well as a body of common knowledge, practice, and approaches” and created an opportunity for professional development on lesson planning, teaching pedagogy, and assessment.
- Piloting a pre test in the foundation courses will provide us a benchmark of students IL skills prior to the sessions and help to design curriculum and will make the assessment of performance clearer. Developing IL lines on rubrics with departments and the foundation courses Providing video/screen capture feedback follow up Develop an assignment bank for faculty and librarians to utilize (already started the Keene Info Lit bank) Developing a system to collect the assessment data and to pull out reports was essential. Now we have an in house version developed. Help librarians be able to assess assignments improve them for IL But OVERALL Visualizing two tiers of assessment can help librarians make connections from their instruction session and classroom assessment to the campus map of intellectual skills and the picture of information literacy development on campus and facilitate seeing more meaning to participating in assessment practices. Thinking of information literacy assessment in two tiers, from campus and from the library, can help create a picture of how information literacy is the responsibility of all faculty members to develop