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| D2L Screenshot: Submit Feedback Tool |
Library budgets are getting slashed left and right. A practical means of justifying their existence is to consistently evaluate the programs and services libraries offer, thereby quantifying the value to the customers and justifying the expenditures of the library. Many universities have programs to support teaching information literacy skills to students. Interestingly, Matthews (2007) explains
Teaching information literacy skills is generally viewed as affecting student outcomes because these skills support such educational outcomes as critical thinking, problem solving, and lifelong learning. Unfortunately, this view is an assumption that has yet to be proven in a series of studies that can be replicated. (p. 238)
In general, we think of an assessment as being for the benefit of the student, so that students can consider and reflect on their performance and be provided with suggestions for ways to improve and learn. Beyond the benefit to the student, an assessment for an information literacy class is also beneficial to the teacher, as it is potentially a measurement of the effectiveness of the lesson. Furthermore, the assessment is of value to the stakeholders of the library at large, as it can be used to justify the continued funding of information literacy instruction—that is, so long as the assessment is positive.
Matthews (2007) points out that it is a common assumption that information literacy classes provide valuable skills to students; however, this assumption is not consistently supported by data. When discussing a common method of information literacy instruction, namely skills testing, our own former SJSU SLIS Director Ken Haycock is quoted as saying, “We have years of study to indicate that isolated skills lessons are not effective, not even when they are related to a topic of study” (as cited in Matthews, 2007, p. 239). This is a problem.
As librarians/teachers, I think we generally focus on whether or not students learn and understand the content of our lessons, and we use assessments to gauge the students’ skills, as well as our own effectiveness as teachers; however, if we want the continued support (i.e. funding) to provide such programs, we also need to assess our choice of content and measure the overall appropriateness of the content for our audience. It seems to me that there are three areas of instruction that need to be assessed: 1) the value of the chosen content to the audience; 2) the method and effectiveness of presenting the content; and 3) the increase (if any) in knowledge, understanding, and/or skills of the audience as a result of the instruction.
As many of you know, SLIS is transitioning from ANGEL to Desire2Learn (D2L). Starting Summer term, all SLIS courses will be conducted in D2L. Although this only covers one of the three areas of assessment that I mentioned, one of the things I like about D2L is that it has a built in tool for students to give feedback to instructors. Students can give feedback and/or rate a course item, and they can do so anonymously (I tested this and can assure you it is anonymous). I like the concept of “ongoing formative assessments” as described by Wiggins and McTighe (2005, p. 169). Wiggins and McTighe give the example of the “one-minute essay” used at Harvard University, in which students respond at the end of each class to two questions: “1) What is the big point you learned in class today? and 2) What is the main unanswered question you leave class with today?” (p. 169). The feedback feature in D2L has the potential to fulfill a similar role in a virtual environment. I am particularly excited about this feature in D2L and I’m curious to see if students and teachers will use it.
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| D2L Screenshot: Submit Feedback Interface |
[LIBR250 Prompt: What is the role of assessment in learning? Is assessment a tool for the teacher or student? How can assessment be both?]
References
Matthews, J. R. (2007). The evaluation and measurement of library services. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
8 comments:
Ah yes, the role of assessment in proving to outside entities that we are doing what they paid us for and doing it effectively. It seems like the third area of instruction is the only one assessed by standardized tests and other evaluation tools. Yet the first one is perhaps the most important--if the subject matter itself is irrelevant, why teach it? Why grade it?
Hi Kimberly,
I appreciate the links you made between assessment and program funding. These are critical connections to be making at this moment in time in which so many programs seem to be on the chopping block (sigh) and must tirelessly make a case for their effectiveness.
From my previous life as a high school teacher, I had thought of the function of formative assessments such as the one-minute essay (what I've called in the past "exit notes") as primarily for the benefit of the teacher. Within many content area classes, it's harder to know along the way the extent to which students are "getting" it, what questions they have. (A contrast might be the band teacher/ orchestra conductor who can easily hear where students are in terms of their development and provide immediate feedback to help them improve.) So I see formative assessments such as the one-minute essay as an opportunity for the instructor to quickly "listen" to the students and to "tune" lessons according to the feedback she receives. I think that students might be apt to be more honest in their responses, especially if it is an ungraded or credit/ no credit kind of assignment--some of the stress of grading is lifted under these circumstances.
Finally, I had no idea that D2L had this function--I like it! (I'm still considering what I think about the five star rating option--do we have to rate EVERYTHING these days? I suppose there's a place for it, but sometimes I feel a bit prickly about how we've become a culture of critics for everything. What's the value of plain old fashioned narrative without a rating attached to it?)
@shelfninja - totally, if it's crap going in, it will still be crap going out...sorry, that's not the most eloquent way of saying it. :P
@Kathleen - It's true, the 1-minute essay is totally beneficial to the instructor, but I certainly think it's beneficial to the student as well. If I were a student in a class that did 1-minute essays at the end of each lecture, I think I would pay attention more! I'd more consistently listen to what the teacher was saying and consider if it was something I understood or didn't understand, and if it were appropriate to include in my 1-minute essay. I think it would allow me to focus my listening better.
@Kathleen: Interesting point about us becoming a culture of critics. I wonder how much being the recipients of grading growing up contributes to this attitude. There's so much pressure to "like" or rank things that it doesn't seem there's as much room for measured consideration of its merits.
I really like the 1-minute essay too, as an instructor (of course), but I think writing things down sharpens our understanding of them. Plus, if you don't understand something, the teacher can address it next time.
Your first quote about information literacy skills really struck me. I think that these skills are often "assessed" by fulfilling assignments, where it's taken for granted that they must understand how to find information if they just wrote a paper using references and citations. But reading over the IL Standards made me so impressed by the detail. Do I really, truly incorporate every single standard? Is this an example of a lot of wishful thinking on the part of the librarians who created them? And maybe it's time to really study if it's working (where they have the resources to actually provide library instruction).
That Ken Haycock quote is eyeopening and saturating library instruction with mindless assessments schemes for the sake of funding seems pretty precarious?
I also thought the one-minute essay was very savvy, especially the way students used it as mean to focus on the class content.
Yeah, I've been really interested in methods used to test the effectiveness of IL courses lately. While I don't love standardized tests, there is one called the Project for Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS), which aims to provide universities with a tool to test the effectiveness of their IL courses compared to other universities. I don't know if this is the best tool for the job, but I do think there is a need for such a tool. It's valuable for individual schools to evaluate their own IL courses, but sometimes you don't know how well, or poorly, you're doing until you can compare against a peer...which is why standardized tests, such as SAILS, can be so appealing. I'm very curious to see how widely this is used and if it picks up steam or peters out. Here's the Web site if you want to check it out.
https://www.projectsails.org/sails/overview.php?page=aboutSAILS
I worked on norming the iSkills test from ETS it was an eyeopening experience.
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