Brief overview of assessment techniques in information literacy classrooms

1. INFORMATION
LITERACY
ASSESSMENT:
FROM THE CLASSROOM
TO THE CURRICULUM
Sara Miller - October 11, 2012

2. WHAT IS ASSESSMENT, EXACTLY?
 Figuring out what you want to know
 Figuring out how you can know it
 Collecting data to that end

3. WHAT IS ASSESSMENT NOT?
 Vindication: an attempt to prove or justify something
 Evaluation: an immediate measure of your worth, value, or
effectiveness
 Automatically going to tell you that you suck.

4. WHAT IS DATA?
 Pieces of information that are captured or recorded.
 Not just numbers. Qualitative data counts too.
 You might already have a lot more sources of data than you
realize.

5. TODAY’S AGENDA:
 Teaching and Learning Assessment
 Program Assessment
 Institutional Level Assessment

6. INSTRUCTIONAL ASSESSMENT:
WHAT DO WE WANT TO KNOW?
 Is my teaching effective?
 Are students learning?
 WHAT are students learning?
From another perspective:
 Is students’ approach to research changing? How?
 Could the way I teach reinforce negative student habits? Could it have a
positive affect on changing those?
Really specific:
 Can students articulate the differences between a popular and scholarly
article?
 Does taking students on a building tour increase the likelihood of a favorable
attitude toward the library?

7. TWO TYPES OF INSTRUCTIONAL
ASSESSMENT
 Formative helps along the way
 Asking: what do you still have questions about?
 In-class clicker questions
 Summative is assessing after the fact; cumulative.
 Paper, project, or bibliography
 Final exam

8. LEARNING OUTCOMES
 Outcomes are specific and measurable
 Outcomes are guides for a sessions’s structure, content, and
teaching methods (pedagogy)
 Outcomes can be talking points for faculty – especially when
expectations for a session are unrealistic.

9. WHAT’S THE IDEAL?
 In an ideal world, what would you like these students to be able to
do?
 What steps would they need to take in order to be able to do
those things?
 Can you address any of these steps through your instruction?
How many or how few?
 How do you know if the students can do them?
(hint: that last part is assessment!)

10. CATS – CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT
TECHNIQUES
 One minute free write
 “Muddiest Point”
 Class discussion
 Worksheets
 Think-pair-share or group
review
 Concept maps
 Groups evaluate source and
present to class
 Show two sources, use Poll
Everywhere or clickers to
vote on more appropriate
source
 Compare Google vs. Google
Scholar search results
 Hoax website experience
 Create rubric as a class or
group
 Google form

13. USING COURSE ASSESSMENTS
 Final papers or projects
 Feedback from students
 Pre and post session quiz or questionnaire

14. REMEMBER:
 If you assess the outcome and it’s not met – this is OK
 This could mean:
 It’s not achievable in the time you are allotted
 There are too many other things going on in class which crowd out focusing
on achieving the outcome
 It’s not achievable by the current methods being used in class
 Or… several other things.

15. INTERACTIVE TIME
 Brainstorm and write down some new ways that you could use
CATs in your own class. You can do this on your own or feel free
to talk to those around you.

16. PROGRAM LEVEL ASSESSMENT
 What do you want to know regarding the work that you do with
your library unit or campus department?
 How is my liaison work going? What effect is it having?
 Is my instruction lining up with course, program, or other outcomes? Do these
outcomes even exist?

17. WHERE CAN YOU FIND
OUTCOMES?
 Accreditation standards for your discipline
 Program outcomes (ex. First Year Writing)
 Departmental/Unit mission statements and Gs and Os
 MSU Undergraduate Learning Outcomes

19. MSU NURSING

20. INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL
ASSESSMENT
 What questions exist at the institutional level?
 How do the Libraries affect student learning at MSU?
 At what point in their education are MSU students learning information literacy
skills?
 What value do the Libraries – our services and collections – have for the
University as a whole?

21. INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL
ASSESSMENT
 UG Learning Outcomes – Rubric Assessment
 Standardized testing – SAILS, iSKILLS, ILT
 Curriculum Mapping

22. Analytical Thinking – The MSU graduates uses ways of knowing from mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts to
access information and critically analyzes complex material in order to evaluate evidence, construct reasoned arguments, and communicate
inferences and conclusions.
Emerging Developing Proficient Exemplary
Acquires, analyzes,
and evaluates
information from
multiple sources
Seeks information from basic
types of sources with minimal
regard for relevance or
quality.
Retrieves information from a
limited range of sources and
identifies biases, strengths,
and weaknesses within those
sources.
Designs and implements
effective strategies to find
relevant sources based on
purpose. Critiques biases,
strengths, and weaknesses of
information sources.
Uses analysis to defend
information choices and reach
original conclusions.
Synthesizes and
applies information
within and across
disciplines
Recognizes multiple
perspectives among sources
of information.
Identifies how information can
be conceptualized differently
within various disciplines.
Examines and integrates
relevant information sources
from multiple disciplinary
perspectives.
Creates a defensible,
compelling work using
multiple disciplinary
perspectives.
Identifies and
applies, as
appropriate,
quantitative
methods for
defining and
responding to
problems
Recognizes the need for and
performs basic quantitative
methods.
Identifies a range of
quantitative methods and
employs them to make
judgments.
Selects quantitative methods
for making sound judgments
and drawing plausible
conclusions based on the
situation.
Critiques biases, strengths, and
weaknesses of quantitative
approaches to reflect on
conclusions and propose
responses to a situation.
Identifies the
credibility, use and
misuse of scientific,
humanistic and
artistic methods
Recognizes a range of inquiry
methods and acknowledges
that they can be misused.
Describes the effective use of
methods and identifies their
misuse in a given contexts.
Judges if methods are credible
and ethical in given contexts.
Selects inquiry methods
ethically and with an
understanding of the
consequences of their misuse.

23. TO SUM UP
 What do you want to know about your instruction, or other liaison
efforts?
 How can you tie your work in to your discipline’s goals or
outcomes?
 Are there larger forces at work that can guide what you’re doing?
How can you find out?

24. HELPFUL SOURCES
MSU Undergraduate Learning Outcomes (formerly Liberal Learning Goals)
http://undergrad.msu.edu/learning
Oakleaf, M. (2010). The Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive
Research Review and Report, American Library Association.
http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/issues/value/val_report.
pdf
Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A
handbook for college teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
LB2822.75 .A54 1993 c.2