Assessment in the College Library – Spring 2006 Projects
LSTA Grant reporting
Library Assessment Project
College Name: ____South Seattle Community College______Submitted by: __Esther Sunde______
1. Librarians doing instruction in Assessment Project:
Esther Sunde
Shireen Deboo
2. List the classes/instructors incorporating assessment:
(circle the classes w/ instructors you have not worked with before)
NURS 173 Sindy Jo, Tiffany Jasperson
NURS 171 Joanne Langlais, Sharon Maslow
3. How many students total were involved in instruction: ____76______
In Winter Quarter 2007, 31 students in NURS 173 received instruction, while for NURS 171, 45 students received instruction.
Assessment Collaborations
(copy this section as needed for each collaboration)
Collaboration #1 – Course: _____NURS 173______
1. Description of the assignment and outcomes for instruction.
Sindy Jo, a faculty member in South’s Nursing Program, was 1 of 13 Technical/Professional faculty members who were interviewed in Spring 2006.
Sindy attended Information Literacy Immersion, an information literacy conference put on by the librarians of the Seattle Community Colleges September 12-14, 2006. There she completed a project as a condition of receiving a stipend (Exhibit A), developing the “magazine” assignment (Exhibit B), which she and a nursing faculty colleague taught in Winter 2007. Students working in pairs found a health claim made in the popular literature or on the World Wide Web. Students investigated the claim made, using library periodicals databases to locate the original study that the health claim was based on, as well as one additional related article. Students determined which article was most relevant to the claim made in the popular magazine article and read this article closely, focusing on the abstract, conclusion, limitations of study, and/or suggestions for future research. Students compared the information in the magazine article with the original study. Student pairs wrote up the results of their research, using APA style to cite their research. Their papers were required to follow the format below:
- Introduction
- Literature review
- Research findings
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
After completing their assignment, students used a rubric to conduct peer evaluations before turning in their assignment to be evaluated by the instructors.
2. How and what evidence did you gather?
Students were evaluated based on a rubric created by the nursing instructors (Exhibit C), who provided copies of their student evaluations to the Library at the end of the quarter.
3. How did it go? What did students really “get or not get?”
Early in the quarter, students received an orientation in which the process of going from popular magazine article to research articles was demonstrated. Informal feedback in class indicated that students were getting it and were locating research articles. At the Reference Desk, librarians later worked with several students who were having difficulty in finding the original research article and determined that students needed more flexibility in the assignment with regard to finding the original study. Nursing faculty provided the Library with copies of the grading rubric that they used with students for this assignment. The rubric covered the following Information Literacy outcomes:
· Access ProQuest or Academic Search Premier to find articles on a specific topic in order to select the best suited for the assignment
· Analyze two scientific studies for topic-relevance in order to identify the one more relevant to a specific health-related topic
· Judge a health related claim using scientific studies in order to determine the validity of the claim
4. What did the assessment results tell you? Because of the assessment, are you going to change anything?
Our informal assessment at the Reference Desk indicated that some students needed more flexibility with regard to finding the original research study that their research claim was based on, and we were able to notify the nursing instructors who made a modification in the assignment to allow a different article if the original study could not be found. The rubric assessments showed that most students had a high level of mastery of the information literacy outcomes taught in this lesson.
5. What feedback did you get from the faculty member you worked with?
Sindy Jo indicated that she was pleased with the library orientations that students received and the way the assignment turned out. She is playing a strong leadership role in infusing information literacy throughout the entire nursing curriculum. Nursing faculty are weaving information literacy into the 4 quarters of LPN training. As indicated in Section 1, the NURS 171 nursing instructors also had their students do an information literacy assignment. Quarterly information literacy assignments will culminate in a final research paper incorporating various kinds of library sources that have been covered throughout the course of the LPN students’ training.
Overall Learning
1. Give an example from one of your collaborations of something you are going to improve based on the feedback you received (faculty, peer, student work).
We are very enthusiastic about Sindy Jo’s project! It provides a model for infusing information literacy into the curriculum which we would like to duplicate in other Professional/Technical programs. Professional/Technical programs provide a progression of classes which students must take in order to receive their degree, which makes it possible to build in progressively more complex information literacy tasks throughout the students’ course of study. For our project in Spring 2006 we interviewed a number of Professional/Technical faculty, and we plan to pursue the contacts we initiated with these faculty members to integrate information literacy training into more of the vocational programs.
2. How did these activities contribute or connect to your Action Plan?
Our Action Plan called for collaboration between the librarians of the three Seattle Community Colleges to plan and implement a districtwide 3-day professional development training, the goal of which was to teach faculty how to incorporate information literacy into their teaching. Information Literacy Immersion was implemented by the district librarians in September 2006 before the beginning of Fall Quarter. South Campus’ goal was for at least 3 of the 13 Professional/Technical faculty who were interviewed in Spring 2006 to attend Information Literacy Immersion and complete projects. Three of the interviewed faculty signed up to attend, but one had to cancel because of family obligations and one did not show. Thus Sindy Jo was the only one of these Professional/Technical faculty who actually attended the conference.
However, it should be noted that in addition to Sindy Jo, 6 other South Campus faculty participated in Information Literacy Immersion 2006: Roger Bourret (Applied Academics), Jane Harness (ABE/GED), Kelly McKnight (English), Jon Nachman (ABE/GED), Jan Oehlschlager (Communications) and Diane Schmidt (Music). As a result of the district-wide information literacy conference put on by the district librarians, there seems to be a broader awareness of information literacy across our campus and we have had an increased number of requests for library orientations. In general, faculty seem to be doing more information literacy in their classes. On April 12, 2007, we will hold a faculty development workshop where Immersion participants from South Campus will hold a conversation with other faculty on how they are incorporating information literacy into their teaching.
Next Steps for the Grant:
These are grant deliverables we are working towards this year. Please keep these things in mind as you plan and give me a sense of where you are and where you could be.
3. Are you currently incorporating authentic assessments in at least 3 academic and professional/technical departments (one of the grant benchmarks)? Can you over this next year?
We are not currently doing this, but can do so over the next year as we continue to work with faculty.
4. Pre-Tests/Post Tests: The Grant indicates that “student performance will improve from pretest to learning assessments by 40%; discipline faculty will indicate student papers and projects demonstrate improvement by at least 2 points on a 5 point rubric as compared to classes where library instruction was not incorporated.”
If you are continuing these assessment collaborations or beginning new ones, can you build in pre/post testing?
We can work with the nursing faculty to build in pre/post testing in the coming year. As we work with other Professional/Technical faculty to incorporate information literacy into their curriculums, we can build in pre/post testing.
Can you get data from the same classes that are not receiving instruction?
Not sure. We can ask faculty to have their students take pre/post tests, but this is a matter of academic freedom and we cannot require them to participate.
5. Documenting Assessment Instruments: The Grant says that 75% of Library Directors will indicate the instruments developed are effective in documenting the instructional and student success and retention dimensions of the library to administrators.
Are you creating assessment instruments that can used to demonstrate these things within your library and your college environment?
Yes.