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

Cut! How assessing student learning helped us focus our video production

Library Instruction Services at UT Austin is faced with the challenge of making sure 8,000 new students achieve a set of basic information literacy learning outcomes each year. In order to maximize the time we spend in the classroom as well as to meet students at their points of need, we began creating videos aimed at teaching students concepts and skills ranging from understanding the importance of background information to finding the full-text of articles. We planned and recorded the videos following best practices, and began including them in pre-session assignments for students and stand-alone research guides. Our web analytics told us that the videos were being used, but the question remained: did students achieve the desired learning outcomes after watching the videos? Approach: In order to answer this question, we recruited 10 first-year students at the beginning of the fall semester to participate in a video assessment project to measure their learning after watching one of the two most widely used videos we created. In individual sessions, student volunteers were asked to think aloud as they completed a pre-test composed of a series of tasks that mirrored the process of finding materials for a typical first-year assignment, and then watched a video walking them through the steps of either finding an article or finding a book on a topic. After watching the video, students were asked to walk through the same series of tasks as before, again thinking aloud and explaining their decisions as they did so. Findings: In the pre-test, only two of five students fulfilled the learning outcomes tied to the video on finding an article for a paper, and four of five students fulfilled the learning outcomes tied to the video on finding a book. In the posttest, four of five students successfully found a relevant article, and four of five students found and explained how to retrieve a relevant book. By analyzing students' comments and performance, we learned that our videos were more successful in teaching conceptual ideas (such as where different kinds of information would be published, or how to brainstorm keywords) than in demonstrating navigation or click-by-click instruction. Practical Implications: Even though our assessment project had a very small sample size, we learned valuable information that has helped us make decisions about the videos we create. In the future, we will focus on creating videos that explain and reinforce complex ideas and difficult concepts (such as evaluating information) or provide real-life visuals (such as finding a call number in the stacks) rather than screencasts that demonstrate tools. This will allow us to spend more time designing instructional tools that aim to help students understand threshold concepts and less time recording screencasts of changing database interfaces. As instruction increasingly moves online, it is essential to know which formats work best for different kinds of learning, and how to focus our energy on providing the most value. After assessing the learning outcomes in our videos, we know how to better facilitate deeper learning.UT Librarie

After the Ribbon Cutting: Creating and Executing an Efficient Assessment Plan for a Large-Scale Learning Space Project

Conference proceeding from the 2016 Library Assessment ConferenceUT Librarie

One Year In: Using a Mission-Driven Assessment Plan to Enact Change in an Academic Library

Conference Proceedings from the 2018 Library Assessment ConferenceUT Librarie

"I'd use this source because... it's about my topic": Teaching Freshmen to Think Critically about Sources

Do you struggle to teach freshmen to think critically about information? It’s hard, time consuming and extremely important. Find out about an assignment and rubric that teach these skills. Learn how we assessed and developed them over time and what we learned about the best way for faculty and librarians to teach these skills in their classrooms. Leave with an assignment and rubric you can adapt, and a process you can apply at your institution.UT Librarie