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The New England Library Instruction Group (NELIG), an interest group of ACRL New England, is requesting speaker proposals for its annual conference “Connecting to Research through People and Process” to be held at Mount Wachusett Community College, in Gardner MA on Friday, June 1, 2012.
This year’s program will explore how instruction librarians can collaborate with others on campus to help students through the research process.
Some of the aspects we could explore include:
- Collaborations with any members of your campus (faculty, students, staff, etc.)
- Innovative information literacy programs that enhance individualized learning experience and engage the student in the process of active research
- Methods of teaching the research process in both reference services and instruction
- Assessment models that leverage collaborative opportunities.
- Assessment of the student research experience
- Use of technology to facilitate holistic learning
- Instruction programs that include understanding the research process as a learning outcome
Any other topics that address how to incorporate collaborations to further students’ connection to the research process in teaching and learning information literacy are welcome.
Each speaker should plan on speaking 30-35 minutes with an additional 10-15 minutes for question and discussion.
The total time allotted for each presentation is a maximum of 45 minutes. We are looking for individual, group, or panel presentations by librarians and/or their collaborative colleagues. NELIG encourages librarians with any amount of experience to submit a proposal. Please do not feel shy about submitting a proposal, even if you have never presented before. NELIG is dedicated to providing opportunities for librarians to learn practical ideas from one another. Please feel free to email if you have any questions about presenting.
If you are interested in presenting a session or a panel, please submit the following online form by February 27, 2012: Call for Proposals: 2012 NELIG Annual Program. Questions should be directed to: acrlnelig@gmail.com.
As I was wrapping up the semester grading semester projects and looking back on the numbers from our first-year instruction program, I heard about the report from the Institute for the Future entitled “Future Work Skills 2020.”
What I appreciate about the report is its focus on skills, as laid out on their site:
Many studies have tried to predict specific job categories and labor requirements. Consistently over the years, however, it has been shown that such predictions are difficult and many of the past predictions have been proven wrong. Rather than focusing on future jobs, this report looks at future work skills—proficiencies and abilities required across different jobs and work settings.
Many of the ten skills outlined can be linked to ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Below are a few of their skills and definitions, taken verbatim from the report on pages 8-12, and linked to the ACRL standards:
- Sense-Making – ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed (Standard 3)
- Novel & Adaptive Thinking – proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule based (Standard 4)
- New-Media Literacy – ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication (Standards 3 and 5)
- Cognitive Load Management – ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques (Standards 2 and 3)
Having the luxury of teaching a three-credit course means I am able to design exercises and assignments that help students build these skills, but I don’t think a full course is required to do many of these things. Instead, a collaboration with faculty could make many of these things happen in one-shots and in short series of classes.
Ask students to delve into the credentials of the author of the source they’ve found – understanding how information has originated gives insight into the meaning and intention of the information.
Teach students – and require them to use – a variety of search tools beyond Google, the catalog, and databases. How about specialized search engines? Combine this with the requirement to investigate credentials, and even the most stalwart of Google users starts moving beyond that first page of results.
I might suggest that the tenth skill, Virtual Collaboration, can be learned in the course of information literacy instruction as well. For example, URI, students’ email is through Google Apps for Education. Despite the link to Google Documents at the top of the window, many students haven’t discovered the ability to author documents and presentations as groups. After a brief orientation, however, they’re off and running, and are thrilled to see their classmates’ edits in real time. Compiling and sharing a group bibliography with links becomes simple. (This could be modified to be done in a learning management system if yours supports simultaneous editing of group documents.)
Did you read the report? What was your reaction? And do you have techniques you use to help students develop these skills that you can share?
Amanda Izenstark
University of Rhode Island
For more information from the meeting visit the NELIG website.
Presentation 1
Bubble Over: Filter Bubbles, Internet Personalization, and You, Sarah Faye Cohen, Andy Burkhardt, Michele Melia (Champlain College)
This presentation simulates an instruction session with the Concepts of Self Class for 1st semester freshman. This instruction session is the first in-class experience freshmen have with librarians. The goal of the presentation is to alter students’ perception of librarians and the work they can do with students.Using Poll Everywhere students respond to the questions:
- Where do you like to get information? Answer options: Web, People, TV, other
- How do you search? Answer options: Google, Bing, Library, Other
Class discussion follows each question.
Students watch this video: Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles.”
Following the video, students respond to the written questions listed below.
Take a moment to reflect on Eli Praiser’s TED Talk about filter bubbles:
- What is your initial gut reaction?
- Were you surprised to learn about filter bubbles
- How do filter bubbles affect you?
- Does this change your perception of Google?
- Do you think you have a balanced information diet?
These are just a few idea starters-don’t be limited to them. Write your reaction, your questions, your thoughts.
Class discussion of the questions and video follows.
The class concludes with the message, “Question everything.”
Presentation 2
Fake Hemmingway: Paraphrasing for Non-Native Speakers, Nikki Krysak (Norwich University)
I introduce foreign language students to real-life plagiarism through art, music, fashion, and literature. We view passages from the 2006 Kaavya Viswanathan book, How Opal Metha Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, and compare them with nearly identical passages from original authors. Students then work in groups to come up with acceptable paraphrases to exercise their translation skills and creativity.
This presentation simulates a class for international students. The goal of the class is to explore plagiarism and to practice paraphrasing as a way to avoid plagiarism.Students look at side-by-side images and consider whether 1 image is plagiarism of other image. Images include:
- Robert Dixon, True Daisy (1984) and Damien Hurst’s Valium (2000)
- “Linsell” scarf designed by Gosta Olofsson (late 1950s) and Marc Jacobs “Mountain Bandanna” (2007)
- Gucci (Spring/Summer 2011) and Yves St. Laurent (1985)
- Jennifer’s Body promotional poster and True Blood promotional poster
Students are introduced to author Kaavya Viswanathan and her novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. This novel allegedly plagiarizes Megan McCafferty’s novels Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. Students examine side-by-side passages from Viswanathan’s and McCafferty’s novels available on Wikpedia. Students practice paraphrasing by writing alternative versions of McCaffery’s passages in pairs and then share their paraphrases with the class.
Students are referred to The Online Writing Lab as a resource.
Presentation 3
Understanding plagiarism through case studies, Rachel Pusateri (Green Mountain College)
This presentation simulates a class for first-semester freshman. Goals for the class include identifying behaviors where plagiarism can occur and identifying when citations are needed.Students are given a small piece of paper and are asked to circle yes or no in response to the question, “Have you ever committed plagiarism?”
Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary of plagiarize and plagiarism are displayed on a screen. Students form groups by counting off 1-5. Each group receives a written description of a hypothetical situation and is responsible for determining whether plagiarism occurred in the hypothetical situation based on the definitions of plagiarism provided. After groups have had a few minutes to discuss the cases, a representative from each group reads the hypothetical situation to the class and explains why the group believes/does not believe that plagiarism occurred in the class.
Following the hypothetical cases of plagiarism, students stay in the groups they have formed. Each group is then given a news article to read that describes a case of plagiarism. Each group is responsible for determining the following points and presenting this information to the class.
- How did the plagiarism occur?
- How could the plagiarism have been avoided?
- What were the consequences that resulted from the plagiarism?
News articles discussed in groups:
- Bombardieri, Marcella. “Harvard Said to Revoke Admission.” Boston Globe 12 July
- 2003. Proquest Research Library. Web. 11August 2011.
- Burress, Charles. “The wrong stuff/Was historian sinister or sloppy?” San Francisco
- Chronicle 9 March 2002. Proquest Research Library. Web. 11 August 2011.
- “Publisher Decides to Recall Novel by Harvard Student.” New York Times 28 April 2006.
- Proquest Research Library. Web. 1 August 2011.
- Sampson, Zinie. “Students accused of plagiarism expelled from ship.” The Associated
- Press State and Local Wire 8 August 2008. Lexis-Nexis. Web. 1 December 2011.
- Walker, Marcus, and Patrick McGroarty. “World News: German Minister Quits Over
- Scandal— Fallout from Thesis Plagiarism Prompts Popular Defense Chief’s Departure, in a Blow to Chancellor.” Wall Street Journal 2 March 2011. Proquest Research Library. Web. 1 August 2011.
For additional information and handouts from the meeting, visit the NELIG website.
Welcome & Introductions
NELIG Secretary-Elect Kathrine Aydelott (Phillips Academy) welcomed the group and introduced our host, Laurie Sabol.
Presentation 1
Beyond the One Shot: Excerpts from a Faculty Information Literacy Collaborative, Karla Fribley & Christina Dent (Emerson College)
In May 2010 and May 2011, Emerson librarians partnered with their Teaching and Learning center to run a 3-day, 16-member faculty workshop called the “Information Literacy Collaborative” (ILC), which was funded by a Davis Foundation Grant. Goals for the workshop focused on increasing faculty understanding of information literacy, creating information literacy-based learning outcomes, and designing information literacy-based assignments.
Karla and Christina walked us through 2 activities—one that involved a skit to help participants understand the importance of clear learning objectives, and the other to get them thinking about how to scaffold steps into a research assignment. The group will reconvene this year to discuss changes in student work.
Presentation 2
Parsing the Sexy Title: Looking Beyond the Academic Colon to the Core of the Article, Catherine Fahey (Salem State University)
Handout
Searching a database for “a scholarly peer-reviewed article about madness in Hamlet” doesn’t work, because scholars write papers called “‘Noises,/Sounds, and Sweet Airs’: The Burden of Shakespeare’s Tempest” or “The ‘Tree of Life’ and the King’s Arboreal Bodies in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline” and traditional keywords such as “love” and “war” are less useful when searching topics in the Humanities.
Catherine demonstrated how to parse article titles to extract their meaning by identifying nouns and using Google and Wikipedia to discover the quotations and allusions . Geared toward a mid/upper level English class, this exercise can be adapted to any upper- level discipline specific information literacy class.
Presentation 3
Effective Research Strategies for Academic Assignments, Stacy Schwartz (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
Stacy demonstrated Simmons’ use of a series of video tutorials accompanied by a Zoomerang survey small-group assignment that together are used to provide research instruction to 20 sections of a first-year multidisciplinary core course (80 minutes, 20 students each).
Presentation 4
Google vs. The Library: Transitioning Your (Re)Search, Zachary Newell (Salem State University)
LibGuide
Zachary detailed part of a series of sessions he offers on the Ethics of Information that explores creative ways to engage students to think about larger issues around information and its impact on their lives. This segment focused on effective ways to get first-year Speech Communication students to think about the way they access and use information, including video clips and discussions about politics, Google and Google searches, and “Filter Bubbles.”
“Open Mic”
Our time was used informally to share lesson plans and ask the presenters follow-up questions.
For more information and to access materials and handouts, visit the NELIG website.
Welcome & Introductions
Elizabeth Dollinger welcomed everyone, introduced herself as 2011-2012 co-chair of NELIG. Best part of NELIG is members – thanked the “teachers” for today. New format today, so please let us know your thoughts. NELIG is always looking for places to hold programs and presenters, so please answer the call when it comes. Italicized areas of the notes indicate teaching portion of the presentations.
Presentation 1
Why Are We Here?: Using the Socratic Method to Enhance Student Learning, Laura Braunstein (Dartmouth College)
How can we use the Socratic Method, an ancient active learning practice, to help students learn to use the library? This session will explore the Socratic Method as a teaching method that enhances student learning. Attendees will gain an understanding of the structured questioning of the Socratic Method and will develop approaches to using this method in their own teaching.
This lesson is done with very new first-year students. Imagine yourself in a first year writing class during the 1st or 2nd week of the semester. You may have had high school experience with databases, in an honors program, or you may have NO experience with research. Writing classes at Dartmouth are interdisciplinary and viewed as a place to initiate 1st year students into the academic community. Laura launched into a conversation with us, the librarians, acting as her students.
The following is the thread of the conversation…each topic was posed as a question to the students, not a lecture from the librarian. Laura also handed out a “script,” but it’s clear that the success of this lesson relies on librarian’s ability to pursue whatever contributions students offer.
- What do you use for research?
- What’s good about it?
- Google & Wikipedia? What don’t you like about these?
- Domain names and pros & cons of each.
- Who are authors/publishers.
- Using other peoples’ materials.
- What are your professors using for research?
- Books, journals, each other…where are they getting the info? THE LIBRARY.
- What are the differences between the library and Google & Wikipedia?
- The library is complicated, overwhelming…so why do Professors use the library?
- What are professors doing when not teaching classes?
- Writing articles…who is reading these articles?
- Why? Professors want to keep learning.
- What’s the connection between student learning, professors learning, professors writing?
- You have been here a couple of weeks, what are the differences between high school assignments and college assignments?
- What do you notice? Professors asking you to create your own learning…one way is through research papers…join the Academic conversation.
- Professors are moving knowledge forward in their fields, not just teaching (HS teachers teaching, coaching, etc). Professors engage in the academic conversation.
- Writing a research paper is like listening in on the academic conversation. You use the library to listen in on the conversation and maybe interject a comment or two. Eventually you put together your own perspective.
- How is the material in library different from material on Google?
- In print, organized, “better” – why better?
- Written by prof…why trust professors? They’re experts…special, more reliable material…WHY?
- Professors read other professors’ work providing validity checks. how do they do this? Editors, friends/peers – introduce “peer-review”…describe how professor submits articles/papers to journals, editors concerned mostly with “does the research move knowledge forward” and “is research conducted in manner of our discipline.” Editors are not as concerned with accuracy, validity.
- When you write a research paper, you’re invited into this “network of knowledge.” Your work here means more in wider network than just getting a grade for this class.
Laura moved on to introduce library website and invited the students to follow along “if that’s the way you learn” or to just watch. Think about the way YOU learn and decide if you want to follow or watch. First, let’s look at what Google offers us.
- What’s going on? Your professor wants you to look into current events: Occupy Wallstreet. Google the topic and look at the results.
- News, Organizations. Highlight the domain name – org.; Click on the site – what’s this? What’s here?
- Occupy Wall Street website: Is this more reliable than the news?
- Does anybody know a word that describes when someone is trying to convince you? Bias – everything on internet has an agenda.
- Go back to search results and notice the advertisements, Wikipedia, Facebook , WSJ, Twitter, etc.
- Official site, news, social networking, media, all on first page. Are these academic?
- Has anyone heard of a primary source? What is it? What makes it primary? 1st–hand knowledge of event. So in our age of social media – Twitter – can be a primary source.
- So what’s available at the library?
- This is a search opportunity that is different from Google. Look at home page. Decide what type of resource I want…Library more organized & more complicated. Google doesn’t ask you to think before you search whereas the library wants you to be more conscious.
- Library resources – books. Do I want to look for a book on Occupy Wallstreet? No…how long does it take to put out a book? BUT, connect Occupy Wall Street to American History, e.g. political movements.
- So what can I find in the library that’s closer to the moment? Newspaper article; the library can search multiple newspapers at once.
- This can be complicated. Search all article databases at once. Type in search…EBSCO search results.
- So now you’ve moved from the library website to a subscription database (results page). ASE brought to us by EBSCO. Know that you’re still in the library because of branding.
- SO could you get to this on free web? Why or why not? Subscription…everything on Internet is not free. There are pay walls. For example, some newspapers allow a couple of free views, but then ask you to pay for further articles. The library provides ongoing free access (paid by your tuition). You might be able to locate on Google search, but you’ll have to pay.
- Go find a book – 10 minutes, check it out and bring it back.
Q&A
Q. What do you do when students don’t respond when you ask a question?
A. Definitely the hardest thing. Some suggestions include:
- Collaborating with faculty; they sometimes help out.
- Just call on people (“what do you think, purple shirt?”).
- Make questions more specific: depending on when in semester the session is…Start with what they know and take them to where they need to be.
- Put the question in terms of own experiences, e.g. researching a trip to Florida for spring break (instead of making it academic).
- Reward for answering questions, e.g. chocolate.
- Adapt. Instead of asking for verbal responses to a question, ask the students to write down their answers. Then have the students swap papers and present their peers’ answers.
- Institutional culture matters. Dartmouth students want to show off knowledge. Some schools’ students expect to be put on the spot.
- Philosophies of pedagogy have changed. Socratic method intended to make students uncomfortable, however librarians don’t have luxury to alienate.
- Use humor to validate. No sarcasm.
General Comments
- The Socratic method is a diagnostic method to identify where students are and then move them to where you want them to be. “You’re being initiated into academic conversation” might not being making an impact on students right now, but eventually they’ll remember.
- Be aware of the developmental stage of students. this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge them and tell them they’re scholars/part of academic conversation.
- Echo the conversation that faculty/deans are saying.
Presentation 2
“Speed Databasing”: Making Lasting Connections in 10 Minutes or Less, Rachel Blair Vogt and Carolyn Gamtso (UNH Manchester)
Inspired by the speed dating phenomenon, our lesson gives students a chance to experience relevant resources which they “get to know” by researching during class. When the bell rings, students move to the next station. This lesson allows students a personalized in-context and hands-on research session in a short amount of time. The librarian serves as a guide and facilitates topic exploration and reflection.
Carolyn & Rachel introduced themselves and provided context for the assignment. UNH Manchester is an urban, commuter campus (non-residential); a small community with small classes. The librarians have good relationships with faculty, and faculty are always in class when librarians the present. UNHM has a small library with 3 instruction librarians teaching 120+ classes per year.
The lesson is a revamp of the “typical” first year writing session. They felt they were doing too much lecture and wanted their session to be learner-centered with less talking by librarians. The librarians act more as “guides on the side.” The lesson is inquiry based with students working on questions they already have. It is hands-on, in-context, and relevant to an assignment at hand.
They designed a lesson around an argument paper, which required in all 1st year writing classes. The library instruction class time is a workshop in which students actually find resources. The librarians work with faculty before class to make sure the students have their topics before the session.
“How can schools reduce online bullying by students” is the topic for the demonstration lesson. Rachel & Carolyn started by asking us to go to the library guide for this class/lesson: http://libraryguides.unh.edu/NELIG. They walked around to make sure we were all there, and also distributed signs to each pair of students, indicating database names: CQ Research, Catalog, and Academic Search Elite. Students also receive a USB labeled “UNH-Manchester Library” that they will keep after the session.
Has everyone been to the library before?
Does everyone have the argument paper assignment? You will be researching your topic to support your side and then find research to support other side as well.
Today we’re going to look for sources and you will LEAVE today with sources.
(Everybody on computer and at library guide.) Think of the online guide as a springboard for research in class. It will be here all semester. You might want to bookmark the page. It’s also linked from Blackboard. You may use it all semester to get into library resources.
We are going to workshop your topics today. To begin we will generate a list of keywords because the library’s resources are easier to search when you have keywords.
Carolyn handed out generating keywords worksheet as Rachel explained what we’re doing. On a white board the topic was written across the top. Rachel walked the class through the worksheet to identify keywords/concepts and brainstorm synonyms for keywords. Carolyn wrote the keywords on the white board. Look how many search terms we have now! We went from 4 words in our original topic to 12-15 words to use in searching.
They introduced various databases: CQ Researcher, Catalog, and ASC . Each student/pair of students was assigned a database to search.
Starting from the Libguide, here’s how to navigate to your assigned database: CQ, Catalog, Academic Search Complete. Who has heard of speed dating?
They explained the concept of speed dating and getting to know a person in 8 minutes. We’re going to do Speed Databasing. Each group will have 8 minutes to find information within each database. At 4 minutes, save what you’ve found to USB( distributed by librarian). The USB is yours to keep. Then work for 4 more minutes, save, take your USB to next station.
The bell is used to start the 8 minutes and indicate a 4 minute warning, as well as time to move to next station. Librarians circulate to see how students are doing and provide one-on-one instruction. The students explore the databases on their own and try to figure out what information is available to them.
After everyone has rotated through 3 stations they ask:
- Did everyone find something they can use?
- Did anyone have trouble or find sources more difficult to use?
- What kind of difficulties did you have? How did you handle the problem? Librarian helped. Sometimes article itself not available. Anyone else have this happen?
- What did you do? Try “full-text” link? Explain what’s happening and the option of ILL.
- How long is ILL? Can be very fast, goes all over world.
At the end of the class they ask the students to go back to the online guide, and click on “Rate this instruction.”
Q&A
Q. How long is session?
A. 90 min. (condensed to 30 for NELIG). The session usually includes a discussion of peer-review and what a journal is. Therefore there is less confusion when they get to searching in the databases.
Q. How long do they usually have at each station?
A. 7-10 minutes. It’s quick on purpose.
Q. Is there any grumpiness on the part of the student regarding the bell and transitions?
A. The kinesthetics of moving around is valauable, but they have also had the students stay at one station if it’s preferred by the professor or students themselves.
Q. Does it waste time to move?
A. It does take up time to have students move from one station to another. However, saving to a USB prevents losing the searches when moving between stations. It depends upon the audience and logistics of the space as to whether moving is recommended.
Q. Do the students feel rushed?
A. After 10 minutes they are usually ready to leave, but sometimes they wish they could have stayed longer. The idea is to introduce them to multiple resources and encourage them to save their results.
Q. Is the session usually co-taught by two librarians?
A. No, but often the librarian is assisted by a research mentor. At UNH Manchester, class-linked writing tutors (students) are hired by the Center for Academic Enrichment as writing tutors. In the research mentor program, Carolyn teaches them library skills. They are trained to recognize when research help is needed, and how to get students started doing research. The class-linked research mentor circulates with the librarian during the lesson.
General Comments
- They have also done speed databasing with upper level courses. It works as a good activity for introducing students to new databases.
- They can do up to 5 databases with the 5th station as a discipline specific database.
- They don’t always call it “speed databasing” as students may not know what speed databasing is and are not always into the name of the activity.
- The first part of the lesson depends upon the faculty’s requests. It can include a worksheet for finding keywords, creating strings, keyword grid, boolean operators, etc.
- The layout of the room that they typically use at UNH-Manchester is long and narrow with 3 to 4 computers per side of room. It is easy for the librarian to move around.
Presentation 3
Digging deeper: Finding Information in the WWW, Melinda Malik (Merrimack College)
In 2011, Melinda collaborated with a computer science faculty member to develop an interesting and engaging lesson plan on advanced web searching using a fictional research scenario on the Titanic. In class, students engage in the discovery of information in both the visible and invisible web in order to fully understand where information lives online and how to find it. Attendees will be introduced to the complete lesson plan and participate in a dialog of where information lives in the visible and invisible web.
Melinda explained that this is the 2nd version of this lesson developed in collaboration with a faculty member, revised from last year, and centered around a Titanic-themed scenario. Generally, the class meets twice a week, with 50 minutes lecture followed by 50 minutes lab. The lesson itself covers two class sessions, but the 50 minute lecture felt too long. So she chunked the lecture session into smaller activities including clicker quizzes, hands on assignments, and videos.
Melinda just taught this last week. The Introduction to IT course is a Gen Ed class for non-majors, including freshmen through seniors. The library session is at the end of the semester. She and the faculty member chose Titanic as the topic and used videos in order to spark student interest in advanced web searching.
She began by introducing the agenda for the week (Melinda in both class sessions).
- Day One – Introduce the difference between the visible and invisible web, and evaluating. Answer the question, where does info “live?”
- Day Two – Discuss how search engine works and advanced search techniquesIndentify Information Need – fictional scenario – Xtranormal Video – daily news outlet: Tyrone needs to do a story, friend Sara found box of Titanic documents in aunt’s attic.
She introduced the roles of the fictional players: Tyrone & Sara as journalists; Charles & Marguerite as research experts (4 characters in XtraNormal videos). The students’ role was that of research assistant for Tyrone. They were to come up with sources that he can use for a story.
An XtraNormal video introduced the story of Tyrone & Sara and the Titanic documents, followed by an activity where the students look at actual documents and come up with news story ideas for Tyrone. The students are then asked:
- What do you already know about topic?
- What have you learned?
- What else do you NEED to know (this is the info they need to find during the week-long lesson)?
The students then watched a second video about where information lives. The XtraNormal video featured Charles & Marguerite explaining the difference between the visible and invisible web. As the video plays, Melinda takes notes of key themes on the white board next to the video screen.
After video, Melinda recaps highlights.
We’ve just learned that there are 300-400 billion pages on the web, but Google only finds ¼ of the information. What about the rest of the stuff? How do we get there?
Melinda then leads discussion about where info lives using a clicker quiz. Students are prompted to pick what they think is the best answer, not necessarily the only answer (visible web, invisible web, or both).
- You need to find newspaper articles reporting the Titanic disaster from 1912. Where do these articles live?
- You need to find a scholarly journal article on social class in the Edwardian era and the Titanic. Where does this article live?
The discussion included the following:
- How information is moved to the web. Is a for-profit enterprise going to make information freely available? Why can some of it be found freely available? Things are posted illegally all the time . . . also, sometimes you locate existence of a source via Google, but you need to pay for access.
- Open Access. Some scholars in some disciplines are publishing scholarly information on the free web. So depending on the field, you may find scholarly/academic articles on visible web.
- Google Scholar. Where is Google Scholar searching, the visible or invisible web? It’s a little bit of both. (Melinda highlighted the intersection on the pie-chart on the white board.) Sometimes you can get access to visible web articles through Google Scholar. An author may have wanted to share their work freely or someone may have posted articles illegally. Also, Google searches publishers website. Publishing companies are more than happy to make that information available. However, once you find out an article exists you have to pay for it to access the full text. BUT, Google Scholar NOT searching all of the invisible web. Keep in mind that the visible web includes everything on company or organization intranets. For example, Google Scholar doesn’t search Blackboard, or confidential information such as medical records, or information that’s a paywall.
- Why would a journalist want to use a scholarly article for research? Especially with the Titanic as topic, online sites could be just fan sites.
This section of the lesson also includes to questions on finding primary sources and statistics online.
General Comments
Regarding assessment, the professor requires the students to complete an in-class lab for each session as well as a weekly homework assignment. Melinda had already reviewed the students in-class labs for the week and discovered that in future iterations of the lesson, she and the professor will need to focus more on how to evaluate sources as the sources they students chose in class were not great. They will ask the students for feedback about this lesson as they did not seem to appreciate the humor in the XtraNormal videos.
Presentation 4
Comparing Reference Sources: A Side-by-Side Approach, Kara Young (Keene State College)
Keene State College was recently the recipient of a new collaborative student work space featuring mini white boards and tables with built-in screens that enhance the ability of groups to share their work. This session makes use of these features to help groups identify the characteristics of and differences between library-owned and freely-available reference sources.
For her presentation, Kara brought the group to a new instruction space in the stacks at Mason Library. The space is open, airy, and separated from the stacks and seating area by dividers. It includes a projector, screen, and white board. The students sit at tables arranged around the periphery of the space. Each table has space for 4-6 students, and 4 laptops (or students can use their own) with ability to connect to a docking station in the center. The docking station allows the laptop screen to be projected onto one of two side-by-side screens at one end of the table. Students can then project two different websites onto two different screens, and are able to make side-by-side comparisons as a group. Each table also has a “huddle board” next to it, a white board on a stand for making notes the whole group can see.
Kara explained that she likes teaching with technology, and this lesson is one she uses with a required Introduction to Research and Writing class, usually taken by freshmen & sophomores. (Integrated studies instead of Gen Ed at Keene State). Librarians go to the ITW class twice a semester where students learn to find and evaluate information. The lesson Kara presented is the one used in the first visit, generally in early September. The goal is to find and evaluate websites, compare & contrast two resources, and develop criteria for what makes each resource good or bad. The two resources to be compared are Wikipedia and Credo Reference.
Kara started the lesson by welcoming us to the library.
What we’re doing today is exploring broadly to see what’s out there. Does anybody have a topic yet for your research project? No? That’s actually perfect because pre-research is important. Today we’re going to FIND, READ, and EVALUATE what’s found on the Internet.
Your topic may come from a class assignment, or a life experience. What do YOU use the web for? Entertainment, shopping, Facebook. Let’s talk about shopping. Do you bargain-hunt online? How do you do it?
Are there any other examples of using the internet for personal research, of finding information and using it to make decision in your non-academic life? How do you decide whether to trust the info you’ve found online?
Today, we’re going to use tools you know – Google, Wikipedia, to search for information. Everyone open a web browser & go to the url that’s written here on the white board. http://libguides.keene.edu/nelig (Kara projected the screen to model where we should be clicking.) This guide will be here for you all semester. Now, click on Background Resources and let’s find Credo Reference.
Working in your group, decide who’s laptop will project to the screen. One screen should display the Credo Reference page and one screen should show the Wikipedia search. Now, search the same topic on both screens and compare the results. You can search whatever topic you like.
On the huddle board next to your table, make lists of the what you like and don’t like about each resource (Credo & Wikipedia). The librarian circulates as the students search.
At the end, Kara asks the students to reporting back with each group presenting their list of pros and cons of the resources. She then facilitates a discussion of why/how you know if sources are good – get at the real differences between resources – tone, authority, subscription. The groups conclusion was that Credo is convenient like Wikipedia, but unlike Wikipedia the information is reliable.
What do you think of Credo? Will you try it?
Premise of the lesson is to familiarize students with what reference sources are, using the root word “refer.” Also the lesson gets the students to think about keywords and types of resources. It’s natural for students to use Wikipedia, why not teach them to use it well, appropriately.
Wrap-up
Elizabeth concluded the day by thanking all teachers and “students”, asking everyone to respond the upcoming request for feedback (on e-mail) and inviting all to NELIG Annual at Mt. Watchusett in June.
Presentation 1: Gathering Background Info – Credo v. Wikipedia, Jennifer Ditkoff from Keene State College presented a lesson that she and other librarians from Keene conduct with students in freshmen writing intensive courses who are working on their final 20 page paper. She does this activity with them to help them work through their topics before they do concept mapping and database searching. This exercise asks students to compare a variety of reference sources and to use those sources to gather background information on their topics. For this exercise, attendees used Credo and Wikipedia, writing down the main concepts and key terms that they found in each source. When working with students, Jennifer emphasizes that research is a recursive process and that gathering background information is an important stage in that process.
Presentation 2: Finding What you Need: Choosing your Own Adventures in Library Research, Laura Robinson Hanlan from Worcester Polytechnic Institute started off by talking about two of the biggest challenges in research: figuring out what questions to answer and figuring out where to go for the answers. She developed this exercise for students in WPI’s Great Problem Seminar, a 2-term course taken during freshmen year. In this course, students work in teams of three to four to research real world problems and investigate engineering solutions to these problems. When students attend this session, they already have background knowledge about their topics and they have learned about the library’s resources in a previous session. This session would normally take 65 minutes so Laura modified the lesson for a 30 minute presentation. During this session students work in their teams to:
1) come up with an elevator pitch for their topics, providing a short description of the topic that could be understood by people who don’ t have background knowledge of the topic.
2) choose a research question related to their topic.
3) think of what who (researchers, governmental organizations, companies, etc.) might produce the information needed to answer the research question.
4) think of keywords and synonyms.
5) start searching for sources using an appropriate database for this research question.
6) choose one source to focus on. From there, students look for leads based on reference lists and forward citations, as well as experts and organizations and keywords written about in the article.
After each of these steps, the whole class is brought into a discussion about their research. Laura developed this exercise to try to get students to slow down the pace of their research a bit, giving them time to think about who might produce information on their topic, to develop thoughtful keywords, and to find higher quality sources.
Presentation 3: Build Your Research Foundation: Every Great Project Begins with a Plan, Joy Hansen of Middlesex Community College presented a lesson that she does with students in English 101. This course is a fundamental research skill-building course, but librarians are only able to visit these classes once a semester. In the past, Joy had a posted a worksheet online for students to use in their research. However, few students had used the worksheet on their own. Since students often struggle with developing a thesis statement and search strategy, Joy expanded the worksheet and started bringing it into library instruction sessions.
The worksheet begins by asking students to describe the assignment and the assignment requirements. This is an important piece to start with since students sometimes inadvertently depart from the original assignment. Next, students write down their topic idea. (By the time of their library instruction session, English 101 students have already chosen their topics and have had their professor approve the topic.) The worksheet has guided questions, helping students come up with a research question and generate keywords. Middlesex Community College has the Points of View Reference Center database and students are directed there to look articles on both sides of their topics. Students also use the bibliographies in Points of View to find other sources they may want to check out later. After using Points of View, students are directed to search Academic Search Premier for terms from the list of keywords they have made.
By answering the questions on their worksheets, students leave their sessions with something tangible and they’ve developed an effective research plan by the end of their instruction session. Students are also encouraged to share their sheet when meeting with professor or a librarian.
Presentation 4: Mind Mapping Software: Improving the Student Research Process through Inspiration©, Joshua Becker from Western New England University demonstrated a lesson where students use Inspiration© software to create mind maps, or concept maps, during library instruction sessions. At Western New England University, mind mapping has been used most often in library instruction sessions for freshman composition classes, but this exercise could be helpful for students of all levels.
Joshua began by going over different types of mind maps. For this lesson, we each chose a topic from an assigned list and then we all practiced with the most common type of mind map, a spider shape with sub-topics branching out from a central theme. Joshua encourages students to brainstorm and think quickly while making their maps; they should not worry about whether they will use all of the terms in their final papers. While making their maps, students think of different keywords and make connections between different ideas. The process encourages students to think more deeply about their topics which they will eventually develop into an essay for their class. Western New England’s instruction room has two projectors and the instructor can choose a student’s computer workstation to project at the front of the room, allowing students to evaluate their peers’ mind maps.
There are a variety of online tools for creating mind maps, but Inspiration© allows users to generate an outline from the map. This option works well for certain learning styles.
Open Mic Discussion:
After the presentations, there was time for open discussion. There was discussion about what different schools are doing for assessment. Some librarians use Google Docs during sessions, having students fill in responses to different questions. There was also discussion about how to teach a class when the students do not have any research assignment to go along with the library instruction session. One suggestion was to use interesting topics as examples, such as looking for information about “Life on Mars.” Librarians also talked about the work they are doing with students in subject-specific courses.
For more information about the meeting, visit the NELIG website.
Presentation 1:
Scene: Fairfield Edition: Orienting First-Year Students to the Library Using Interactive, Multimedia Game Play, Laura Weber & Jessica McCullough, Fairfield University. Workshop attendees were divided into 3 teams and played a library version of the game Scene It. Each team watched a short animated video of Fairfield students using the library. After the video, the team had to answer a question about how to use the library, the answer of which was given somewhere in the video. There was also a group round where all 3 teams played against each other. In addition, teams also answered Wheel of Fortune style questions and Word Jumble Questions based on the short animated videos of Fairfield students using the library.
Library Scene: Fairfield Edition is used with all of the freshman writing classes at Fairfield University and has been a huge success. They can be seen on this website: http://faculty.fairfield.edu/mediacenter/library/scene/index.html . The videos were made in collaboration with Fairfield University’s Media/IT department. The types of software used include: Apple Motion, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Pro Tools, Dreamweaver, and Flash. For more information contact: Jessica McCullough (jmccullough@fairfield.edu) or Laura Weber (lweber@fairfield.edu)
Presentation 2:
The Power of Video: Creating a rapport in the classroom that extends throughout a semester, Kari Mofford, UMass Dartmouth
Kari designed a long video called “Library Dreams” for English 101 students to watch before they come in for library instruction. The plot of the video is students have nightmares about doing research papers and using the library. In the dream sequences, librarians and library aides show the students how to successfully use the library. Kari also created minute videos with faculty which are mini library tutorials. These videos focus on a particular faculty’s area of personal interest, like training service dogs, and then work in ways in which the library can be used to further that faculty person’s knowledge of their area of interest (like using Interlibrary Loan to order articles on training service dogs).
Handout
Presentation 3:
Mastering Music Searching, Erica Charis, Berklee College of Music
Erica demonstrated her drop in sessions for faculty and students about how to use advanced search features in the Berklee Library Catalog. Erica uses prezi to make her presentation dynamic. The drop in sessions specifically focus on the challenges of how music artists and musical works are listed in the library catalog. In the case of music artists, sometimes they are the main artist (or author) – but other times they are contributors, such as songwriters or producers. Also, it can be challenging to find artists who use professional aliases, like Sean Combs. Regarding titles, challenges included works known by various titles, generic titles, and titles that use “text speak.”
Open Mic Discussion:
After the presentations, there was a short discussion on how workshop attendees are using videos in library instruction. Librarians use Camtasia, Captivate, and Panopto to create tutorial videos and screencasts.
We have 5 locations for the Winter Meeting on the morning of December 2, each with a great lineup of speakers. Please follow the links below for details for each site.
- Keene State College, Keene, NH
- Providence College, Providence, RI
- Tufts University, Medford, MA
- University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
- Western New England University, Springfield, MA
Please register at http://goo.gl/SFMGS.
Directions and parking information will be sent to registrants the week before of the program.
Please email us at acrlnelig@gmail.com if you have any questions.
Instruction Swap!
Morning of Friday, December 2
Often when we are at NELIG events, we hear our colleagues discussing innovative activities they have done with classes at their school. Sometimes we might even watch a great conference presentation where a librarian describes an activity he or she has done with classes, but we don’t actually get to see our colleagues “in action.” The December NELIG Meeting will be a great opportunity to watch some of your creative colleagues present a lesson as they would to a class. At each location several librarians will conduct activities that they run, or are planning to run, in their classes. Those of us in the audience will act as their college students. Through this experience we will be reminded of what it is like to be sitting in the seat of the student and learn new teaching techniques and exercises from each other.
Each presenter will have approximately 30 minutes to provide an introduction to the lesson and then to present the lesson to the classroom of librarians.
As has been done in the past, the NELIG Winter meeting will have several locations around New England. There will be five sites:
- Keene State College, Keene, NH
- Providence College, Providence, RI
- Tufts University, Medford, MA
- University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
- Western New England University, Springfield, MA
If you would like to present at one of the December Meetings, please fill out this form and email it to acrlnelig@gmail.com by October 28.
Please read over the site descriptions to make sure that the site where you’d like to present has the technology and resources that you need for your activity. If your activity will require hand-outs or supplies (such as paper and pens), please bring those items with you to the meeting.
Please email us at acrlnelig@gmail.com if you have any questions about presenting.
If you would like to attend a December meeting as a non-presenter, we will be sending out an email with registration information in several weeks.
We are excited about this event and we look forward to learning from our NELIG colleagues!
NELIG Co-chair Elizabeth Dolinger introduced a panel of New England librarians to discuss a variety of assessment methods.
- Coordinates the writing program for first year students enrolled in 1 of 3 writing courses, each of which have a research assignment. Librarians at URI have been working closely with the writing department to help students learn how to use databases to do research for their assignments. After a recent NEASC visit and other campus forces, the librarians decided to assess the effectiveness of their writing program. Jim attended ACRL Immersion Assessment program, where he quickly overcame his fear of the enormity of assessment. Assessment plans discussed at Immersion were methodical and scalable so he could fit one into their writing program. At Immersion he designed an assessment plan and an instructional scenario for each writing class. Megan Oakleaf was an instructor for designing an assessment plan.
- First, start with the goals and outcomes based on the mission of the library and institution, assessment office, etc. Second, match the outcomes with the library’s information literacy program. Third, set criteria with which to measure the objectives (e.g. to reach a certain percentage of students achieving an objective). Lastly, collect the evidence, analyze it, and decide what changes need to be made. The cycle is a spiral that doesn’t end.
- 2700 writing students go through their program each year. He decided to use Survey Monkey to create online evaluations.
- Steps: Design the content, pedagogy, assessment tool, and criteria for measurement.
- He designed a standardized instructional outline for librarians and reference students to follow that supported the writing assignment, including guided instruction with time for practice, enabling the students to walk away with relevant articles.
- Assessment through Survey Monkey; Asked student to provide their research question, the search terms they used, and the citation information for the articles they found.
- He has completed 2 semesters with this program and is about to start the 2nd semester of the second year cycle. The librarians had questions about whether it was really important for students to learn the concept of scholarly vs. non-scholarly because it was difficult to do in a 50 minute session. However, they decided to include it as faculty stated that it was still and important concept they believed students needed to understand.
- He sampled 25% of the Survey Monkey results to evaluate and analyze student responses.
Rachel Lewellen, University of Massachusetts Amherst:
- Rachel is an Assessment Librarian, not an instruction librarian and discussed how assessment throughout the library contributes to instruction.
- The more assessment you do the easier it becomes. One positive experience creates a snowball effect. Instruction librarians don’t just do instruction. They do reference and material selection as well. The data they gather in other areas can help instruction librarians with their instruction.
- Types of projects that she assesses at UMass Amherst:
- resource evaluation, cost per use, where resources are used (on or off campus)
- study looking at acquisitions of books within a 5 college consortium, cooperative collection development, intentional duplication in which cost and use are tracked – data goes back to the selectors at a title level
- assessment of services, stats around desks, learning commons, technology, writing center, reference, circulation in the same area – students don’t really care who does what – mystery shopping idea for assessing whether or not these various desks are meeting the students needs and services provided – circulation of laptops, data showed circulation dropped – why did this happen?
- evaluating types of spaces – partic in LibQual – quiet, collaborative, use of space, count students using different furniture configurations – help inform understanding about the user experience.
- how students learn
- how to improve the user experience and contribute to the mission of the university
- Mass. Board of Higher Ed. Visions Project – working groups that have issued reports about student learning outcomes and assessment and the expectation across the state of how to talk about and report on student learning.
- specific standardized tests
- informal qualitative assessment in classrooms
- All of this data must be brought into the conversation to describe the learning on campus.
- Thinking about using an eportfolio model to gather, express, and talk about learning across campus. Instruction librarians can bring together the data and reflection of what they are doing into one place. The information can then be evaluated as a whole and start campus-wide discussions.
Jeff Waller, St. Anselm’s College:
- Jeff is the “Rubric guy.”
- At St. Anselm College, all freshmen attend instruction twice, all seniors attend once, and there are various other opportunities in between.
- The college has had a pretty good instruction program for several years and has gathered assessment data at the course level, but not programmatically. The college sent a team of staff, including an instructor, the Library Director, and the Associate Dean, for advanced training on assessment by Collegiate Learning Assessment. They then developed a plan, but needed a way to implement it.
- Two years ago the college was awarded a grant from Davis Foundation to assess several learning objectives across campus. The Associate Dean was a coordinator on the grant and ensured that information literacy was included as an objective in the project. The purpose was assess to see improvement in information literacy skills from freshman to senior level using rubrics.
- They chose the rubric approach because:
- They thought it was more authentic because you see how students demonstrate their learning through real assignments.
- Incentives are important. With standardized tests you have to provide incentives to get students to perform well. With existing papers and coursework the incentives are already in place.
- The perception of administration is that there is campus-wide test fatigue. Students won’t want to do another test after others that are already in place.
- They chose 3 faculty from the humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences to include on the committee. They used examples they found online to design the rubric and carefully reviewed ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards to chose 16 learning outcomes that they wanted to assess, either because they were important to the institution and because they were easily recognizable in student papers. Each outcome was graded on a 1-6 likert scale. In hindsight he thought it should have used a 4 point scale.
- They piloted the process last summer, gathering research papers from four freshmen and four senior-level classes. From that group they randomly sampled 72 papers, each of which was graded by two committee members for reliability. 72 was a sizable enough group to ensure the instrument was effective. However, it was not a representative sample, so they couldn’t draw conclusions across campus. The committee discovered early on that the grading of papers was intensive. Faculty were paid stipends for their participation.
- Findings: (data entry, number crunching, data analysis) Students performed the poorest on the evaluation measures, such as recognizing bias and multiple viewpoints. They did better at finding relevant sources and citing, but evaluation was an issue. The committee sought to see improvement over time, but discovered that that was not the case.
- Jeff presented the committee’s results at a faculty meeting last month and the group will be developing next steps. He hopes they will be able to keep the program going, but not every year as it may not be feasible. He is unsure as to whether or not the process is scalable. It may may work well at a smaller college, but not on a larger campus. This is one of their challenges, now to keep it going.
Kathy Halverson, Keene State College:
- Kathy stated that she was a panel participant to discuss the library’s use of SAILS (standardized assessment of information literacy skills) as an assessment tool.
- The nine librarians at Keene State College are all involved in instruction and reference and wear many hats. In 2007/08 Keene State revamped its general education program, now know as the Integrative Studies Program (ISP). One of the 8 outcomes of the ISP was information literacy. The outcomes of ISP are campus-wide, and the library is not soley responsible for the information literacy outcome. At the same time, there was a college-wide push for assessment. The administration wanted all campus departments to move toward a systematic assessment tool. The library already had a strong instruction program through freshman writing classes, which involved in 2nd foundation course. The bulk of IL teaching was with the freshman and the librarians wanted to expand to upper level courses.
- The librarians had been doing some assessment, including evaluating bibliographies from freshman writing classes. However, they realized that this needed to be more in depth. Library faculty reviewed different standardized tests, iSkills, assessment by James Madison Univ., TRAILS, and SAILS. They decided upon SAILS, a knowledge test of 45 random, multiple choice questions testing a variety of skills based on ACRL competency standards for higher education (except standard 4). They chose it because of its low cost, ease of student use, administration via online or paper, anonymity, reliability, etc. It was first administered to freshmen in the fall 2008, which they found easy to do as the library faculty were already embedded in the first year writing classes. They had a target of at least 300 students (22 different classes took the test). They gave it as a pretest to students during the first week of the fall semester, before they had any library instruction in order to get a baseline of what skills the students were bringing with them from high school.
- In the fall of 2009, they joined a consortium within the greater SAILS group administering the test who were also doing it as a pretest at the same time. They wanted to compare freshmen scores with juniors. They administered the exam to freshmen in the fall of 2008, 2009, and 2010. In the spring of 2011 they gave test to juniors, which proved harder to do. Thought they would be able to compare students to students, freshmen to juniors. Perhaps they didn’t ask enough questions or the training wasn’t good enough, but it wasn’t clear to them that they would be unable to do this. They discovered in late 2009 that the test was designed to provide a benchmark of information literacy skills of their students compared to students from other institutions administering the test at the same time. SAILS was not meant to be administered as a pretest unless you administer it again w/in the same administration (meaning the same semester) where the questions and the scoring remained unchanged. Over time the test has gotten harder, the questions and scoring have both changed such that comparisons could not be made.
- The results of the exam are reported by class standing and major. Scores are based on item difficulty and student performance. the exam measures 8 skill sets and benchmarks and is organized by ACRL standarts and skill sets.
- By joining the consortium, their students’ scores could be compared to other institution, and compared to a smaller sampling of institutions within the consortium.
- Because the tests were revised so often they could not compare scores of specific skills. What SAILS could do was compare score spreads from year to year. Working with someone on campus who is an assessment expert they could also analyze data from 2008 to 2011 to prepare an assessment report for the administration.
- The disadvantage of SAILS was that there was no individual data (as of 2008). Kathy thinks that last year SAILS started to offer a different type of test with individual scores. There was no customized feedback to students, and the test was not conducive to small sample sizes. At least 200 students’ scores were needed to obtain a precise measurement, which increases the likelihood that all demographic breakdowns are populated. The data is not valid for groups with under 50 participants. They found that this was not a problem with the freshmen because they were already present in the classes. However, it was difficult to give the test to juniors last spring. They had to recruit classes to take the test and many faculty did not want to give up their class time. They also tried to recruit individual students by posting notices in multiple campus communications. Eventually, they ended up with 156 juniors out the original goal of 300.
- Since then they have decided not to continue the SAILS assessment project, but they are not sure yet as to what direction they will go in next.
- The SAILS project was a learning experience. If you go into it with the right information you would be fine if that’s the data you want to entertain.
Q&A:
Q. To Jim: What questions were and how you used Survey Monkey?
A. Demographics, e.g. did they complete the concept mapping activity? type your research question, type the search terms you used that you think worked best, what tells you your results are relevant, pick the most relevant article and type the title, periodical title and source, what type of article you chose, scholarly or not, how do you know it is scholarly or not, rate your prof.
Q. Follow up: How did you use Survey monkey, how to separate out different classes.
A. Asked for course and section number, downloaded into excel and sorted the data.
Q. Follow up: Did you do this at the end of each class?
A. They started doing it in all classes, but changed this year to only do in 75 minute classes, not the 50 minutes classes. This works out since they do sampling anyway.
Q. To Jeff: Did the students ever get the results or findings of your assessment study and if not would you consider giving them the info?
A. No, the papers were submitted anonymously. No bias as they don’t know anything about who wrote the paper. Students overall? They haven’t done that, but it might be worthwhile to close the loop a bit. Thinks it needs to come from the instructor level, where they found a consistent problem perhaps the instructor needs to address.
Q. To Jeff: Did the students see the rubric beforehand so they knew they were going to be evaluated?
A. No students didn’t know ahead of time. Talked about it, and decided not to do it because they wanted it to be a more nature assessment. But does see value in giving the information to the instructors ahead of time.
Q. To Jeff: Were the research assignments different and if so how did you reconcile the students papers when evaluating them?
A. Asked faculty to submit assignments ahead of time to ensure that they are likely to hit upon all of the criteria to be evaluated. Picked assignments that required multiple sources, evaluating sources, etc. Freshmen english papers were easier. Senior papers were more challenging.
Q. To Kathy: If you had institutional buy-in for the assessment of information literacy objectives, why did you have a problem getting faculty to help with administering the test during the junior year? Was it a planning problem or was buy-in not as strong as you thought?
A. Many of the classes in ISP are taught by adjuncts (gen eds). There isn’t 100 buy-in by all faculty. They’d rather be teaching classes in their majors rather than an ISP class.
Q. To Jeff: You mentioned an activity for students to evaluate evidence to choose what’s relevant to support an argument. Could you share that activity?
A. The activity was developed by Collegiate Learning Assessment and is an exercise in the assessment program. Check their website to see if they have any examples.
Q. Follow-up: I’m having trouble in my institution with translating ACRL outcomes into student behaviors that faculty can expect their students to do to demonstrate competency with learning outcomes? Are you happy with the ability of the rubric to do this?
A. The rubric can always be improved. Specificity is an example of something that needs to be improved. Some of the ACRL objectives are difficult to determine how to assess in quantitative way. He found that many of the faculty recognized the outcomes right way. Faculty are recognizing at the outcome level the problems their students have. But a next step would then be creating pedagogy to do this.
Q. to All: How do you initiate projects that lack funding?
A. from Jim – They worked with library-friendly faculty within a workshop with Megan Oakleaf, working through assignments and running them against a few faculty. They all appreciated it. No stipends, but those that participated appreciated it.
A. from Kathy – When they revised the information literacy outcomes for the ISP they obtained stipends to pay faculty to be in on the process. But they have other committees that don’t have stipends, and it’s usually faculty that are library friendly that participate.
Q to Jeff: If you have a collection of artifacts to use, how did you tap into them? They have a Blackboard account where faculty and students are asked to submit their projects to be evaluated or assessed. How did you come up with a system to facilitate the process of collecting artifacts [student papers]?
A. In terms of their project they worked selectively with faculty, but had no systematic way of gathering artifacts. Relied on faculty to give papers from their class and randomly selected from that pool. No formal system.
Q to Jeff: How did you get the Davis foundation to give you a grant?
A. This originated from the grantmaking office and the deans. Originally they did an assessment of critical thinking and writing across the campus. Then they wanted to go a step further to assess additional objectives. Got funding for 7 objectives. Info lit was just one of them. Helped to have the assoc dean involved.
Q to All: Do any of you have outreach by the libraries to get a faculty member to push the cause, rather than the library being the point of the assessment? Getting the faculty to champion the assessment and to do the work? At Umass they don’t believe that information literacy belongs to the library. Through campus committees librarians work with the faculty to help them incorporate information literacy into the curriculum.
A. from Jeff – Having administrative support was key. Helped to have it come top down rather than going through each department. To go college wide you need admin buy-in instructing faculty that it has to be addressed in the curriculum.
A. from Jim – Go viral. They hope all library-faculty talk to other faculty. Also having a good relationship with the assessment office, who dragged the provost into it who love assessment. They don’t really know what information literacy means. Working at all fronts.
Q. to Jim: you conducted surveys at end of an instruction session. All students were supposed to have done prework. Did you have instructors who didn’t have their students do the prework and how did that affect the session?
A. Department chairs required instructors to include a 20 minute presentation on concept mapping to bring to class. But scheduling classes didn’t always work out. So how did that affect what the students were able to do? It’s hard to say, they ask faculty to tell them of the topic/assignment. Going in they should know what the class is working on. But sometimes that breaks down and they have to add-lib in the class. It’s not a perfect system. They didn’t really look at the results specifically comparing who had done the pre work and who hadn’t.
Q. to Jeff: You rated 16 criteria on a 1-6 scale using your rubric. In thinking about making the project sustainable did you think about scaling back the number of criteria that would still be valid but sustainable?
A. That is definitely on the table as something to discuss. Started with 22 criteria and quickly realized that it was too much. The harder aspect was the 1-6 scale. Really want to change it to 1-4 scale. Faculty kept wanting the ones they felt were most important. Hopes to get to 12 points. Do 1-6 or 1-4 scale so there’s no mid point and the evaluator is forced to make a choice.
Q. to all attendees – Is anyone interested in sharing rubrics?
A. from Laura Hibbler – That is something that we’re looking at doing on the NELIG website.
A. from Elizabeth Dolinger – Also check out the RAILS project.
Q to All – Talking about a 4 or 6 point likert scale, have any of you worked with your office of assessment at school and did you learn anything from them?
A. from Jeff – He met with the Office of Institutional Research to review everything they did because they know how to design surveys, identify the correct language to use, the correct rubrics to use, etc.
A. from Rachel – UMass has an Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. They give out data for the campus, they (the library) shares data with them. They are a great campus resource and also help to build a connection between student performance and how that can be related to what libraries are doing.
A. from Jim – He also works with the Instructional Development group on campus, spending hours going over language to use.
A. from Jeff – Institutional research office helped with determining sampling, size, gathering, statistically sound instruments, etc.
A. from Kathy – Keene also works with a Director of Assessment, who is an expert on assessment and using statistics. A valuable partner in charge of assessment for the whole campus.
Q. to Jeff – Are you using specialized programs to crunch the numbers? Are you doing it or someone else?
A. Institutional research did the processing of the raw numbers. Probably used SPSS and Excel. His group took their work to make the tables and graphs and write the report.
Jim answering question from earlier – Regarding measuring results of those students that completed the pre-work versus those that didn’t compete the assignment, he found a statistic showing that those that didn’t do the pre-work assignment didn’t do as well as those that did.
Q. to All – How do you use the results of assessment? Do you make changes to the instuction program based upon the results of the assessment?
A. from Jim – Not yet. They did change the instructional scenario in the classroom a little so that students understand scholarly and non scholarly, and encouraged the instructors to get the preactivity done. But nothing major yet.
A. from Jeff – They still do post tests in freshmen english classes. With the weakness they’re seeing in evaluating sources, they’re trying to address that more in the upper level classes. Discussed as librarians on shifting emphasis in class, but no formal changes have been made.
A. from Rachel – They are not focusing on programmatic change, but quick adjustments could make within a term to help the students.
A. from Kathy – The curriculum hasn’t been changed as a result of SAILS data. They are still evaluating the results, but hope to do so in the future.
Q. to All – Has anyone done assessment with graduate students?
A. from Rachel – Her library did LibQual, which included graduate students to obtain comments about library as place, collections and services. They found that undergrads love the learning commons, but the graduate students want their own graduate commons. They also have a train the trainer program, whereby teaching assistants go through a program with the librarians to help them incorporate information literacy skills into the graduate classes that librarians can’t meet.
A. from Jim – He only works with undergrads. But they have done LibQual and their graduate students are concerned about accessing materials.
A. from Kathy – They have mostly undergrads, but they do have graduate education students. They work with them a little, but haven’t done any assessment.
A. from Jeff – There are no graduate students at St. Anselm College.
Q. to All – Formal assessment has been discussed today, is anyone doing informal assessment to get feedback to inform how well they are doing what they are doing?
A. from Kathy – Keene has just started doing classroom assessment by gathering artifacts in freshmen classes.
A. from Jim – Freshmen have a service learning requirement in which they take a short survey through survey monkey.
A. from Rachel – She likes to gather qualitative data. LibQual provides qualitative responses. One of the best chances to get user feedback. She also does focus groups for furniture, web usability, etc.
A. from Jeff – They have a faculty survey that they run every few years and a few questions are on instruction program. Feedback is open answered. They also have anecdotal responses from faculty, e.g. librarians asking faculty how the students did on their papers.
A. from Jim – They also have 2 questions at the end of their writing survey on the instructor’s presentation skills, and whether or not the information presented was useful.
Q. To the Attendees – Who is doing assessment in instruction classes?
A variety of librarians stood up and talked about assessment in their libraries.
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