Special Interest Group Archive: BI SIG 11/20/15

Tiffany Davis, Mount Saint Mary College

​Daniel Pritchard, United States Military Academy
Denise Garofalo, Mount Saint Mary College
Ellie Horowitz, Dominican College
Jen Park, Mount Saint Mary College
Richard Arnold, SUNY Sullivan
Stephanie Poegel, Salvation Army Library

Carolyn Bennett Glauda, SENYLRC Staff

The next Bibliographic Instruction SIG will be:

Friday, February 26, 2016

11:00am - 1:00pm

(snow date: Friday, March 4)

TD started with an overview of her recent experience at an assessment immersion seminar. She opened with recommending Classroom Assessment Techniques for Librarians.

Also from her handout is a rubric from RAILS, (see the linked assessment generator to the left.)

Q - How familiar is everyone with assessment?

DP – We just started this semester. They started with a survey and then modified it. Open ended – what do you want to learn about? What we think they want to know is different than what we know.

TD – works with faculty to make certain that they have what they need more work on.

DP – do assessments in class, while they are there. Using LibInsights. They checked after each session.

Self-reporting assessment is common. Nessy survey. Interviews, focus groups. DP did focus several years ago. He just sat in the back and took notes. There was a facilitator.

Types of Assessments:

• Muddiest points – is there any part of the class that is unclear today?
• Minute paper – take one minute and write about what you learned today.
• Empty outlines – terms & definition, ask them to fill them in.
• Fixed choice test – some of the immersion folks had a preference for performance assessments.

EH – clarification on SAILS & TRAILS – they are evaluation tools that you can purchase, but they are pricey.

Q - When you’re starting from scratch, what tools can you use to develop them?

Use Bloom’s taxonomy to come up with verbiage. Try to keep it at the same level from the list

Design your learning outcome based on what you want students to learn.

Then design your content to match curriculum to outcomes.

Most important – close the loop to focus on the thing that students didn’t get.

RA – used a multiple choice quiz to make certain students got the concepts. That was better than process, which leads to blind obedience. Information literacy is broken down into packages. They think the introduction to the library and the people is a good first step before they can dive deep into teaching skills.

Basic question to ask students: where do you think these databases come from?

TD - Scaffolding is so important – you have to build and grow on special skills. RA – we have to also make certain that faculty understand that they might not be ready to write a paper or understand the meaning of peer reviewed yet.

JP – Clarification on the SAILS test, RA - it is 55 questions that can be done in 45 minutes or so. Some say they finish in 10 minutes. Measures all the information literacy components, and it was developed by Kent State.

TD - Research practices survey is another option, it is a normed test although it does not send you results like SAILS does.

RA – they measure at the end to see what people are taking away. They don’t do the pre-test, it’s more expensive, and they don’t have a way of tracking the same cohort over two years.

TD – Assessment is often on the librarian’s skill, was the person knowledgeable, were they prepared? But what evaluates it better is how the student does on the assessment.

Should each class have its own assessment? - Not necessarily. One idea is to have a menu of assessments and have faculty select from those. 

TD - Example Performance Assessment overview

• When reporting on learning outcomes, you set goals such as "80% of students successfully completed the assignment."
• Align your learning outcomes with your institution's missions, goals, plans, etc.
• Don't be overwhelmed! Do a little at a time.
• It can be difficult to get faculty on board, They have different ideas, which may not be appropriate for concepts/skills/outcomes.

TD - Advocate by telling faculty those skills are needed for hiring.

EH – Is anyone at a school where everyone had one required class?

RA – we have poor retention, and all are required to have English Comp 1. They focus on that one

SP – all the first years take all the same classes at the same time. They have a blackboard module with quizzes after each lesson. She designed it with the former teacher, but she no longer sees the students in person and is feeling detached. They just get the grade, not feedback. It’s very basic, starting with “read your assignment” to “this is what APA is.” She had two instructors bring people in person, but that was only half of the students. Anything that is not required is hard for them, since many of her students are parents with kids at home.

TD – what is the best time to reach people? Keep yourself in front of them at each new step.

EH – They have a mandatory freshman English class, they see them in the fall and the spring. That is a good time to do a pre-assessment, before the library session. From Information Literacy Advocacy project. She wants to build it into class time in the spring.

DP – No mandatory classes at West Point. They have to split up instructors because there are so many English classes. More than one instructor or librarian in the class helps. That helps for librarians too, especially the ones that don’t teach frequently. They have about 15-17 people per class. He reinforces that the most important thing they need to know is his name and number.

RA – Having the teacher help with the teaching also helps, especially when they point out something as important.

JP – Ends her intro classes by reminding everyone to remember her name.

DP – Always asks them: what do you think librarians do?

TD – people are wary to understand how they should process all that data. Ask them to review what they learned that day, two things you learned, things you’re unsure about, things that could be better. DG alone had 500 students with this data. You can look at 25% of your data to find emerging trends after the first year when you look at all the data.

Open ended qualitative analysis can be coded into categories. IN the first year, put all the questions into all categories. Then see if 25% is an accurate pattern. If it is true, then you can use 25% going forward.

Google forms are great for bare bones assessment if you have enough computers.

During pre-test time, students have more time. Post-test comes around midterm time, and they have a lot of other pressing work.

CREDO information literacy product, It aligns to the standards, the framework, provides graphs and data.

RA – would like to develop more menu items rather than rough blocks.

Multiple choice does not show that students actually know how to do things, just that they now the answers.

DG – they had an annotated bibliography assignment from a teacher who gave the grades to her afterward, it was a final project, not a final. Note annotated bibliography rubric in the handouts.

Format for an Assessment Plan

Helpful for Middle States accreditation. Comes from the Oak Leaf reading.

Badging for assessment would be a fun idea for tutorials.

Adjuncts don’t always use content management systems, and as a result not everyone can access the learning community. MSMC uses a libguide.

Chat tools are good to know if you are serving your population.

Developing a topic assignment – it helps to make copies for everyone. It helps to keep a note of what topic everyone has. Helpful to note within the spreadsheet.

Some teachers give students credit for taking pre, post tests and taking the tutorials.