Zero to Sixty: Implementing outcomes assessment for an entire organization

Conference proceeding from the 2018 Library Assessment ConferenceUT Librarie

Closing the Loop: How an information literacy assessment plan contributes to first-year student success at UT Austin

Before attending the assessment track of Immersion I struggled with writing an assessment plan for my unit, which works collaboratively with faculty members to support information literacy in first-year seminar courses. Through Immersion, I had a breakthrough in my thinking about how to feasibly assess the mixture of teaching techniques and learning outcomes used throughout my unit to support the diversity of courses we work with. I brought the insights gained through work with my Immersion instructors and cohort members home, and my colleagues and I finished and enacted a comprehensive assessment plan. My poster will cover highlights of our plan, focusing on changes that we have made based on what we learned about student learning through assessment. I plan to feature: 1) How we are using individual classroom and course-level assessment methods as part of our program level assessment. 2) How we worked with faculty members to assess course-integrated information literacy in both large classes and small seminars. 3) How we have used the evidence we gathered to improve our program. 4) How the process of working together to create an assessment plan has increased both confidence in using student learning assessment methods and communication about assessment within my unit. I plan to interact with viewers by sharing what we have accomplished through assessment since my Immersion experience, and inviting them to discuss their experiences with assessment and successful methods they have used. This exchange of ideas will contribute to the ever-growing culture of assessment within our profession.UT Librarie

MS-084: Letters of Gerald Koster, World War II

The collection is compromised mainly of letters written by Gerald Koster home to his family in West Toledo, Ohio. The letters follow Koster through training in Great Lakes, Illinois and into combat as well as giving a fairly complete portrait of life on board ship. While Koster’s letters to his parents focus on naval operations and descriptions of military life, those addressed to his younger sister, Phyllis, include more information and queries regarding friends, family, and neighbors on the home front. Koster is very careful about censoring; few of his letters have been edited. As the war continues, he becomes more critical of the Navy and the handling of the war in general. His last letters from Japan are particularly critical and illustrate the frustration Gerald felt after being in the Navy for three years. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1076/thumbnail.jp

MS-085: Mary Dolheimer Collection of Women’s Commission Papers (1985- 2001)

The contents of the collection include reports, memos, minutes, agenda, budget reports, grant requests and other various miscellaneous materials from the Women’s Commission’s long tenure on campus. Included are the Climate Study of 1986 and the Reassessment that followed in 1990. Also included are minutes from subcommittees tasked with budget concerns, planning the annual Women’s Dinner or other current concerns of the Commission that year. A History of the Women’s Commission written by the summer intern Meredith Bowne during the summer of 1996 is included and is a good source on how to approach the collection as a whole. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1077/thumbnail.jp