Assessment: Measuring Services and Resources in Academic Libraries

5^th Biennial Conference for Academic Libraries in New York State

October 2-3, 2003

Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center

Keynote Speaker

Oswald M. T. Ratteray Assistant Director for Constituent Services and Special Programs, Middle States Commission on Higher Education

Assessing Information Literacy

Handouts: PowerPoint slides, Executive Summary of the Middle States publication, Developing Research and Communication Skills: Guidelines for Information Literacy in the Curriculum

(Notes below supplement PowerPoint handout).

Librarians cannot conduct an assessment or provide data for a baseline assessment for information literacy. They can provide some of the data and are in control of a piece of the data.

Collaboration is a shared responsibility for instruction, but something is not quite right with the way this is working. Two components are being completely obliterated.

5 ACRL components of instruction were split into six:

• Know need: determining need for information begins with the faculty member, not the student.
• Access information: librarians often do this, sometimes faculty
• Evaluate sources: librarians have a role but faculty has the final word
• Evaluate content: faculty is the lead; librarian may have a role. Evaluating content is not the same as evaluating sources.
• Using information for a specific purpose: still in faculty member domain.
• Ethical/legal issues: both faculty and librarian have responsibility for understanding economic, legal and social issues in the information.

Information literacy is well developed in lower level courses, but there is little evidence of it as it goes up through higher level courses and into graduate courses.

Collaboration begins with creativity. Information literacy starts here.

How to get dialog going on campus with getting faculty to accept their role in info literacy? Librarians can’t use the excuse that they are powerless or don't have faculty status. It also is not sufficient to just work on one faculty member at a time.

Mr. Ratteray asked the groups to brainstorm the question, “Do you need an info literacy program?” After conversation at the tables, responses included:

• Monroe CC says yes, you need to have something with a programmatic element and evaluation of what you are doing. Better chance for relationship if you understand instructors.
• Onondaga: only have 5 librarians -- can we accomplish this?
• Deb Schmidle described a program they did at Cornell School of Industrial & labor Relations.

How can this be accomplished?

• Giving the faculty ownership of the information literacy competencies and letting them use their own language and formats.
• Librarians stepping back and looking at this as an educational process that belongs to everyone across the board. Let the faculty play around with the ideas for awhile, then we come back in as facilitators.
• Must recognize how literate or illiterate faculty are and teach them as well.
• Ratteray: Can you reach them through their research?
• Do we need to send Middle States back to the drawing board? Framing the issue may have caused the problem. This isn't really a different mission than we've always had. Now put into terms of collaboration, but we don't know what we are collaborating about.
• Over the last 20 years this has been a library initiative, but it should be a faculty initiative. Better to address issues in the educational process than look to librarians for leadership.
• What is the learner's point of view? Issues should be across the curriculum, not just in one class.
• Writing across the curriculum is the model we should use.
• We must understand how the discourse goes on in a discipline. Many faculty really are doing information literacy in their classrooms, but perhaps not as well as they should. They need help from librarians. ARL best practices are not meant to be prescriptive, though Middle States requirements are!
• A faculty member in attendance commented that she thought it was her responsibility to teach research. She never thought it was the librarians’ job. Information literacy is a faculty responsibility. It must be embedded in the curriculum or it will fail.
• Faculty and librarians must work like an integrated unit in order to make this work. They must work together and formulate models together.
• St. John Fisher had strong administrative support to look at information literacy and information technology fluency needs across the curriculum. They used faculty pedagogical support mechanisms to teach awareness of issues, needs.
• Need holistic approach: communication and research skills together.

Ratteray: Middle States perspective:

Everyone is part of the group of educators with different specialties. Also needed to get dialog going. For the book title, the “information literacy” term was changed to communication and research skills as a better description.

Question to the audience: What opportunities are available on campuses for communicating with faculty?

· Go on field trips with classes.

· Faculty status does help -- gets more cooperation

· Must build faculty value -- Monroe CC focuses on programmatic skills.
Ratteray: All faculty dealings with students involve information literacy. That part needs to be overtly embraced in information literacy programs. We are doing a good job on access but need to concentrate more attention on other parts of the paradigm.

· Recommendation: Richard Light: How to Get the Most Out of College

Ratteray: The next focus should be on commitment (the will to follow through).

There is no point in talking about assessment if the foundation is not strong.

Middle States wants to know that programs are integrated and that they progress in a logical manner throughout the curriculum. He noted that we are just at the starting gate. There has been no time yet to get this integrated in the first cohort, as the book has just come out. They expect to see real progress by the third cohort (two years from now).

Planning for assessment:

Benchmarking is one option, but be careful about peer group selection. Middle States doesn't require benchmarking.

In planning, the first step is an inventory across campus. Can plug into existing assessment projects both formal and informal. Are there gaps that need to be filled in?

Planning: The big picture

First state a mission critical goal at the institution and then state how information literacy facilitates reaching the goal. From that extract an institutional-level information literacy goal. (see form in handout)

He would like people to fill out the worksheet and send them back to him -- pick out an institutional goal and work with that.

His handout includes examples of mission statements which he cited as significant for involving info literacy.

(See standard 3)

Designing the plan (1): Further information in the book.

(see copies of slides for outline)

Audience question: Has Middle States adopted ARL standards with respect to information literacy? There is a connection (worked through in his article). The task force that dealt with teaching and learning included 5 or 6 librarians. They brought their thoughts in this direction. They have thrown their support behind the concepts as articulated by ACRL. Only one accrediting agency has formally endorsed the standards. He believes others will work them into their standards.

Designing the plan (2):

Use a range of assessment measures. See Peter Hernon's book on assessment.

Middle States would like to see a balanced quantitative and qualitative approach to assessment.

Chart for course level review to help flesh out to what extent direct and indirect measures are being used in assessment. Should help get faculty involved. Don't need everything filled out; but should make certain there is balance between direct and indirect measures.

Designing the plan (3): Allocation of resources

What incentives might help mobilize dialog on campus.

Implementing Assessment:

Must first resolve the foundation then can start dealing with the mechanics of the assessment.

Improvement of Student Learning:

This starts to leave the methodological technicians behind a bit. Requires professional judgment. See book for ideas on strategies.

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” Albert Einstein