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Developing a Comprehensive, Assessment-based Continuous Improvement Process for a Library Instruction Program

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Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Foundations for Pedagogical Success

Tagged Division

Engineering Libraries

Page Count

23

DOI

10.18260/p.26717

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/26717

Download Count

896

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Paper Authors

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Sarah Lucchesi Michigan Technological University

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Sarah Lucchesi has a BA in Biological Sciences from Wellesley College, an MA in Science Education from Boston University, and an MLS from Simmons College. She has been working at Michigan Technological University since August 2012 with a focus on information literacy instruction, assessment, and patents.

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Jennifer Sams Michigan Technological University

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Jennifer Sams received both her BA in English with a concentration in Secondary Education and her MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois. She started at Michigan Technological University in the Fall of 2012 as an Instruction & Learning Librarian.

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Lauren Movlai Michigan Technological University

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Lauren Movlai has BAs in Psychology and English from University of the Pacific, and an MLS from University of Denver. She is an instruction and learning librarian at Michigan Technological University with a focus on information literacy instruction.

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Erin S Matas Michigan Technological University

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Erin Matas holds an MSI from the University of Michigan. She is the Faculty Engagement and Research Support Librarian at Michigan Technological University and leads the library's Student Research Consultants, a group of students who provide peer-to-peer library research help.

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Nora Allred Michigan Technological University

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Nora Allred is Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian at the J. Robert Van Pelt and Opie Library at Michigan Technological University. She provides copyright and fair use awareness to the campus community through the library's webpage, presentations, instruction sessions, and one-on-one consultations. As Co-PI on the NSF ethics education project, she lead the learning module on copyright and fair use for graduate students.

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Abstract

The library education team at Michigan Technological University, an engineering-focused university, is developing a multifaceted process for assessment of our information literacy instruction program in order to continuously improve our teaching and related activities. The majority of library instruction sessions are 50-minute one-shot classes with little or no follow-up from the faculty or students involved; as such, the efficacy of library instruction programs can be difficult to measure. In addition to already existing rubric-based information literacy assessments of student work, the education team is establishing a suite of accompanying methods for gathering both quantitative and qualitative data about our instructional activities. In summer 2015, the team participated in a retreat at which a number of methods of data collection were proposed. Four areas were selected for further development. A formal method for soliciting faculty feedback via a post-instruction survey has already been deployed and will collect responses throughout the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters. Three additional data collection methods will be launched in January 2016: a peer observation system, a rubric-based self-assessment, and analysis of student work products generated in the library instruction sessions. Collectively, these feedback mechanisms provide actionable information about the teaching effectiveness of individual librarians as well as the effectiveness of our education program as a whole. Information gathered from these assessment processes will be used in a variety of ways, including individual goal-setting for the following academic year, changing lesson plans to more closely align with students’ needs and abilities, and generating specific and concrete recommendations for improving teaching and pedagogy for each instruction librarian. This paper reports on the process of developing each of these data collection methods, the information that has been gathered, and how that information has been applied to the improvement of our library instruction program.

Lucchesi, S., & Sams, J., & Movlai, L., & Matas, E. S., & Allred, N. (2016, June), Developing a Comprehensive, Assessment-based Continuous Improvement Process for a Library Instruction Program Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26717

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015