Assessing the Authentic Learning Assessment Project
Report for the Spring 2009 Authentic Assessment Project
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Due June 19, 2009
The purpose of this report is to reflect on your learning and to create a repository of shared ideas and strategies for Washington state community and technical college libraries.
Project Summary (about 200 words)Information Literacy is one of SVC’s general education values and some instructors indicate that they include this value in their coursework. The librarians held workshops to help faculty incorporate information literacy into their classes by creating a new IL assignment or by tweaking a new assignment. The workshop also included information on assessment and faculty were to create an assessment tool to go along with the assignment. The workshops were two hours long and follow up discussions were posted on a wiki that librarian, Elena Bianco created for the workshop. The goal of the project was that faculty would have an assignment that included IL values that they would use Spring Quarter. Some of the faculty were able to use the assignment spring quarter and some were not and will include it during fall quarter. Faculty were from various disciplines including: Nursing, various Science disciplines, Human Services, Counseling, Economics, Music, and Environmental Conservation
Participants – Who worked on this project?
Librarians: Margret Mills Linda Hendrick Susan Kent Chari McRill Elena Bianco
Faculty: Brian Hanchett
Anne Mullenniex
Natalia Dunn
Connie Bonner Britt
Anne Danford
Claus Svendsen
Stephanie Bethea
Jennifer McFarland
Lee Ash
Flora Adams
Lori Stephans
Bob Malphous
Class name(s) and approximate number of students involved:
Learning Outcomes or Project Outcomes – What did you want the students to be able to do? OR What did you intend to accomplish?
We wanted to enable faculty to really understand what Information Literacy is and help them incorporate it into their classes by creating an assessable assignment. Our agenda included specifically looking at out college’s general education outcomes wording regarding IL.
Curriculum – What did the students need to know? What content needed to be covered?
Since each faculty created a different assignment, the depth of information literacy skills and information that they needed varied quite a bit. One assignment for students in a careers class, had students evaluate the difference between web sites for job seekers and write a brief summary about which would be the most useful for the student. The old assignment had them just look at a certain number of job web sites without an evaluative piece. The assignment for music had students write a 2-4 page paper about a certain topic and then relate their findings to their own personal musical situation. Students in environmental conservation had to write a paper that incorporated field research and merging their individual writings with a larger group.
Pedagogy –What were the setting and learning activities for the students to gain/develop these abilities?
As mentioned in the paragraph above, various assignments were created based on the class that was being taught.
Assessment – How did the students demonstrate the learning? What assessment did you design for students? (Attach any assessment tools you used)
Library faculty created a rubric to grade the various assignments and assessments that the faculty created for their students. The majority of faculty used rubrics to evaluate their students, however some used pre-test post-test or performance.
Criteria – How did you (instructor and librarian) know the students had done this well? How did you judge/evaluate the performance?
The faculty that were able to use the assignments in spring quarter did so and reported back to the library faculty about the results.
Data – What data did you collect? How did the students perform? Please include the data (even if you have to mail it to us) if at all possible.
The majority of faculty were able to incorporate the assignment into their spring quarter classes. According to results of our survey the majority of faculty believe that the information they learned at the workshop allowed them to incorporate information literacy into their class assignments with a score of 3 or 4 out of a possible 4. Faculty turned in copies of the assignment they gave or will give to their classes as well as their assessment tool We also collected surveys from the faculty evaluating the workshop.
Best Practices – What Best Practice would you pass on to other librarians or discipline faculty?
This project was really rushed for us and for our faculty. Realistically, we would have done a much better job if we did not try to create and carry out this project in such a short time span. Faculty that attended indicated they felt rushed to create and incorporate an assignment when we were already into the quarter. We wanted to have a follow up meeting of the whole group but relied on individual meetings, emails, and the wiki to complete the project because of time constraints.
Key learning – What’s your observation or reflection on this project? What did you or the faculty member learn from this project?
Information literacy looks different in different disciplines. I thought it was so interesting to see the variety of assignments that faculty came up with that addressed IL needs in their different disciplines. Our faculty learned that including IL in an assignment is not a difficult task but that you really need look at the learning outcomes to make sure you are addressing the value/outcome. One faculty made the following comment,”The workshop provided a different and valuable perspective for me with regards to meeting Learning Outcomes. I now intend to incorporate specific assignments in my classes directly to meet these outcomes. Thank you.”