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Category: Threshold Achievement Test for Information Literacy (TATIL)

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Photo of Lauri Vaughan

By Lauri J. Vaughan

Library Director at The Harker School in San Jose, California, USA

 

We know how lucky we are at The Harker School, an independent, PK-12, college preparatory school in San Jose. We enjoy an oasis of library programming and teaching featuring five full time librarians, two part time librarians and me, the library director. My team spends hundreds of hours teaching at all levels, in all disciplines, to infuse information literacy into lessons and units collaboratively designed by subject area experts and librarians. 

We have a sense that our work puts our students ahead of the curve, especially in California where the ratio of school librarians to students has been dismal for many years. We see our students’ success in classrooms. We hear about it from alumni. But we also perceive weaknesses. When a test came along to quantify our students’ skills, like any good library team, we did our research. Threshold Achievement Test for Information Literacy (TATIL), offered by Carrick Enterprises, seemed promising. Inspired by ACRL’s Threshold Concepts, which inform much of our information literacy instruction at Harker, TATIL might provide a faithful assessment of how our students are doing. 

...continue reading "ACRL and the College Preparatory School: A Case Study using TATIL (Guest Post)"

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For many libraries it's summer time and there's an opportunity to devote attention to longer-term projects. In this post I want to talk about making plans for information literacy assessment.

As you think about your information literacy program you may have questions like these:

  • What can I tell my faculty colleagues about information literacy outcomes on our campus? I want to have focused conversations with them that lead to common priorities and collaborations.
  • What information literacy data can we contribute to our institution's accreditation self study?
  • How can we demonstrate the value of the library to our campus administrators?
  • At what point are students capable of critically assessing the information they encounter?
  • How does student information literacy differ at lower and upper division levels?
  • Are there tools that will help us know are we meeting our institutional learning outcome goals for information literacy?
  • How can I guide my students in gaining a deeper understanding of their IL strengths and weaknesses? Can I guide their exploration of what information literacy is and why they need it, as well as get feedback about where they can improve?

Carrick Enterprises offers a suite of valid and reliable information literacy assessments to help answer these questions and achieve these goals. Supported by a team of information literacy and measurement experts, these assessment tools produce valuable insights that librarians are using to inform their information literacy efforts. Whether it's identifying areas for growth, looking for evidence of improvement over the course of a student's college career, or bringing formalized assessment to accreditation efforts, the Carrick Enterprises assessments deliver what you need with pricing that respects your budget.

...continue reading "Planning to Plan: InfoLit Assessment Projects"

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Today's post is from Silvia Vong and Angela Henshilwood, librarians at the University of Toronto. Silvia and Angela participated in the creation of the Threshold Achievement Test for Information Literacy. They were recently invited to talk about that experience at their university. Here they summarize the discussion.

By Silvia Vong and Angela Henshilwood
University of Toronto

On January 11, 2019, librarians at the University of Toronto (U of T) gathered for an instruction-focused professional development day. The theme of this year’s PD day was “Instructional Design for Librarians.” The day included refreshers on backward design, anticipatory sets, best practices for developing learning outcomes, and more. A good part of the second half of the day was dedicated to assessing our teaching and how to design the best assessment based on what we want to know about our students’ learning. The organizers were familiar with Project SAILS and other standardized tests but wanted to learn more about the new Threshold Achievement Test for Information Literacy (TATIL). So they invited us to give a lightning talk about TATIL because of our experience as test item writers. ...continue reading "Talking about TATIL with Colleagues (Guest Post)"

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At the Library Assessment Conference in Houston Texas earlier this month, Kathy Clarke and I had an opportunity to talk with attendees about the use of information literacy tests. We focused on comparing locally-created tests and commercially-developed tests. Here’s a recap of our 13-minute presentation.

Information literacy tests are one viable option for measuring information literacy. Testing offers specific strengths, including familiarity to students, ease of administration, and efficiency for large-scale assessment. Tests can simplify comparing groups or conducting longitudinal studies and they can suggest improvements to instruction programs. Tests can also offer interpretation of quantitative data for students as individuals and in groups.

...continue reading "DIY or Purchase? Comparing InfoLit Tests"

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The Threshold Achievement Test for Information Literacy (TATIL) comes in four modules that provide depth of coverage of information literacy as a whole. Each module measures information literacy knowledge outcomes and information literacy dispositions, as developed by the TATIL Advisory Board.

In this post I will describe each module with an emphasis on dispositions because they are less familiar to most instructors. At the end of the post is a chart showing how much time students need to complete each module.

Module 1: Evaluating Process & Authority

This module combines concepts from two of the ACRL information literacy frames, Authority is Constructed and Contextual and Information Creation as a Process. It focuses on the process of information creation and the constructed and contextual nature of source authority. It tests students' ability to recall and apply their knowledge of evaluating sources and it tests their metacognition about core information literacy dispositions that underlie their behaviors.

Knowledge Outcome: Apply knowledge of source creation processes and context to evaluate the authority of a source.
Knowledge Outcome: Apply knowledge of authority to analyze others' claims and to support one's own claims.
See the performance indicators for each outcome.

Dispositions
Students who can evaluate sources based on the processes used to create them ...continue reading "Thinking about Using TATIL? Explore the Module Structure"