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Month: March 2019

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By Meghan Wanucha Smith, Coordinator of Instructional Assessment, East Carolina University, wanucham16@ecu.edu

This post is based on a poster presented at 2018 Library Assessment Conference.

Background

Photo of Meghan Wanucha
Meghan Wanucha

At East Carolina University’s Joyner Library, librarians and library staff in Research & Instructional Services teach information literacy instruction for classes ranging from introductory composition to graduate-level research methods and use a variety of assessment techniques to gauge student learning. In previous program assessment efforts, we focused on lower-level composition classes with quizzes to test students’ abilities to use specific library resources. This time around, we wanted to know what students were learning in all of our classes to get a better sense of what the process of learning looked like in the entire instruction program. Could we design an easy-to-implement, shared assessment that would capture this information?

...continue reading "Shared Outcomes, Shared Practice: Evaluating an Instruction Program with One Assessment Technique (Guest Post)"

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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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Nancy Weissman is Professor and Librarian at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

When I completed my MLS degree more than two decades ago my dream job was the reference desk at Cleveland Public Library. However, my first interview led to a position at Cuyahoga Community College and 26 years later I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I learned in that first interview that the job I was offered and accepted would entail teaching. I point this out as I had no training or desire to teach. I took no courses that prepared me for creating a lesson plan or on the philosophies of adult education. How hard could it be? Sounds like fun.

...continue reading "I’m Doing Me: Authenticity in the Classroom (Guest Post)"