July was a big month for the Threshold Achievement Test. We finished first drafts of all of our items for the module “Evaluating Process and Authority.” We’re getting feedback from our board members now on all of these items. After another round of revisions, we’ll conduct cognitive interviews and usability tests with students throughout August to find out how well our test questions are communicating what we think they’re communicating to our test takers.
We’ve also added 5 new board members who will be working with us on writing and reviewing items, conducting cognitive interviews, and leading field tests on their campuses:
- Joseph Aubele is a librarian at California State University Long Beach in Long Beach, CA.
- Helen Koo is pursuing her Master of Library and Information Science at University of California, Los Angeles.
- Isabelle Ramos is a Reference & Instructional librarian at California State University Northridge’s Oviatt Library in Northridge, CA.
- Silvia Vong is the Collaborative Learning Librarian at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto in Toronto, ON, Canada.
- Kelley Wantuch is a Library Services Specialist at California State University Long Beach, in Long Beach, CA, and a recent graduate of San Jose State University's iSchool program.
In July, I also made my first formal presentation about our test. I was invited to the Toronto University 1-day conference on assessing IL where librarians were discussing how they will use the new Framework. The conference organizers graciously facilitated my presentation via Skype, since I was not able to join them in person. The audience asked insightful questions and offered helpful feedback. You can view the Powerpoint presentation.
In August, in addition to the cognitive interviews about items from our Evaluating Process and Authority module, we’ll also be writing items for our next module, Strategic Searching.
Check back here for more updates.