Information Literacy Assessment Reports: Home

2022-2023 Information Literacy Assessment Report

In concert with the mission of Centre College, the Grace Doherty Library serves to prepare students for lives of learning, leadership, and service. Information Literacy Instruction is one of the services the Library offers to fulfill this mission of life-long learning. Information Literacy Instruction also supports the College’s General Education Communication Goal, specifically, that:

• Students will communicate effectively using written, oral, and visual modes in both formal and informal settings.
• Students will gather information, understand and evaluate how this information is produced and valued, and use that information responsibly.

To support information literacy during the 2022-2023 academic year, the library provided 45 orientation sessions, 96 class instruction sessions (Div I – 13; Div II – 44; Div III – 15, DLM 110/120/310 - 24), 249 scheduled reference appointments and 432 drop-in reference consultations.

To ensure Information Literacy Instruction is effective, instruction librarians assess information literacy instruction each year at three levels: satisfaction-based assessment, course-level competency-based assessment and program-level competency-based assessment.

Satisfaction-based assessment

Satisfaction-based assessment is concerned with the affective domain - student and faculty satisfaction with the quality and content of library instruction. Instruction librarians use Project Outcome, developed by the Association of College and Research Libraries, to gather student feedback on instruction satisfaction. In the 2022-2023 academic year, 351 students completed the survey and 91-93% of them Strongly Agreed/ Agreed that instruction met the 4 surveyed standards (The student: learned something new, will apply the lesson, feels more confident about research, is more aware of resources). These results exceeded our goal that 80% of students would Strongly Agree/Agree that library instruction met the 4 surveyed standards.

Instruction librarians use LibWizard to survey faculty regarding their satisfaction with library instruction. In the 2022-2023 academic year, 23 faculty completed the survey and 100% of them indicated they Strongly agree/Agree that instruction met the 4 surveyed standards (The librarian communicated effectively; the students responded positively to instruction; the session met my students’ needs; the session met my expectations.) This met our faculty-satisfaction goal that 100% of faculty would Strongly agree/Agree that our instruction met all four standards.

Competency-based course-level assessment

Competency-based assessment is concerned with the cognitive domain -what students know or can do as a result of instruction. Instruction librarians assess course-level competency by incorporating a variety of formative assessment activities into each class and recording student success performing these activities. During the 2022-2023 academic year, 1251 of 1304 (95.93%) of students who performed an assessment activity achieved at least 75% on that activity. This exceeds the library’s goal that 80% of students assessed would achieve at least a 75% on the classroom assessment activity.

Competency-based program-level assessment

Program-level assessment examines student learning across courses in order to measure how students are learning as they progress through their academic career. It is based on defined student learning outcomes (SLOs) and has the goal of developing ways to improve the learning process. Instruction librarians gather Information Literacy program-level assessment data from two sources: lower-level data from the FYC Week 6 class activity and upper-level data through the analysis of 500-level student research projects using  rubrics.

In the 2022-2023 academic year, 58% of the FYC student sample identified appropriate keywords to search for an article; 51% found an article that met the criteria of the assignment; 35% adequately applied the PROVEN evaluation criteria taught during the class session; and 32% correctly cited the article they found. In every instance, this failed to meet our goal that 80% of the sample would adequately perform these tasks immediately following instruction.

For upper-level program assessment, librarians evaluated 42 research papers (15 Division I papers, 14 Division II papers and 13 Division III papers) in the 2022-2023 academic year with the following results:

SLO 1a	SLO 1b	SLO 2a	SLO 2b	SLO 3a	SLO 4b
74% met standard	69% met standard	14% met standard	12% met standard	24% met standard	36% met standard

Our goal is that 80% of papers would meet each standard.

Improvement plan

Based on the data gathered during satisfaction and competency-based assessment in the 2022-2023 academic year, instruction librarians plan to improve Information Literacy instruction and learning by:

1. Diversifying the types of course-level competency-based activities used for instruction.
2. Working to more consistently provide pre-assessment and post-instruction reflection activities to help solidify learning.
3. Formalize using satisfaction data for teaching improvement by including references to the data and plans to enact what is learned from the data in the post-instruction reflection.
4. Working with faculty and CTL to increase faculty/librarian dialogue and collaboration in upper-level classes, focusing on Information Literacy SLOs 1a, 1b, 2a and 2b as a gateway to improve overall program-assessment outcomes.
5. Working to develop for-credit information literacy instruction courses students may take as electives.

After four years use, we have performed a process analysis of the Information Literacy Assessment Plan, with the following results:

Strengths

Weaknesses

Collects a wide variety of data, both satisfaction and competency-based, from a variety of sources (formative assessments, such as class activities and summative assessments, such as upper-level research papers) at multiple levels (lower and upper level classes). It helps members of the Centre community understand the impact of library instruction. Relatively low barriers to faculty, students and librarian participation

No assessment (satisfaction or competency) of one-on-one instruction No collection of CATs Difficulty obtaining research artifacts for program-level competency-based assessment (FYC data, DLM data and research papers). Difficulty linking results of program-level assessment to librarian impact No affective domain assessment

Given the above observations, the following revisions to the assessment process will be piloted for the 2023-2024 academic year (changes are in bold):

Three-tiered assessment plan
Tier	Goal	Methods
Satisfaction-based assessment	Satisfaction-based assessment helps us meet two goals: demonstrate the value of library instruction improve teaching style and content	Student satisfaction: Project Outcome (classroom instruction) Navigate survey (one-on-one instruction) Faculty satisfaction: LibWizard survey
Course-level competency-based assessment	Course-level competency-based assessment helps us meet three goals: improve teaching content assessment for learning (i.e. students learn during the assessment process) assessment of learning (cognitive domain)	Classroom Assessment Techniques (ex. worksheet activities, polls/survey, one-minute reflections) turned in to credential (classroom instruction) LibWizard survey completed by librarian to record observed student learning (one-on-one instruction)
Program-level competency-based assessment	Program-level competency-based assessment helps us meet two goals: improve teaching assessment of learning (behavioral/performative domain)	Assessment of authentic research artifacts (annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, full papers) obtained through volunteer student focus groups (behavioral / performative domain learning) Assessment of student responses to focus group questions (affective domain learning)