Information Literacy Assessment Reports: Home

2023-2024 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 2023-2024 academic year, the library provided 45 orientation sessions, 84 class instruction sessions (Div I – 5; Div II – 31; Div III – 19, DLM 110/120/310 - 29), 330 scheduled reference appointments and 525 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 2023-2024 academic year, 400 in-class students completed the survey and 90-93% 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). In 2024, librarians piloted Project Outcome to assess one-on-one instruction satisfaction. Of the 59 students surveyed, 19 completed the survey and 94-95% Strongly Agreed/ Agreed that instruction met the 4 surveyed standards. 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 2023-2024 academic year, 25 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 for in-class sessions by incorporating a variety of formative assessment activities into each class and recording student success performing these activities. During the 2023-2024 academic year, 996 of 1294 students (76.97%) who performed an assessment activity achieved at least 75% on that activity. This does not meet the library’s goal that 80% of students assessed would achieve at least a 75% on the classroom assessment activity.

In 2023-2024, librarian piloted an additional method to gather competency-based data from one-on-one instruction sessions. We randomly assessed 118 of the 855 one-on-one instruction sessions from this academic year using rubrics developed to score students as Emerging, intermediate or Superior on the following skills: Define a research topic, Find primary sources, Find secondary sources, Evaluate sources, Synthesize sources and Cite Sources. Between 42-63% of students achieved intermediate for the skill assessed. This does not meet our goal that 80% of students would achieve the intermediate target.

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 student research projects using  rubrics.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, 96% of the FYC student sample identified appropriate keywords to search for an article; 98% found an article that met the criteria of the assignment; 26% adequately applied the PROVEN evaluation criteria taught during the class session; and 90% correctly cited the article they found. For all criteria other than evaluation, we met our goal that 80% of the sample would adequately perform these tasks immediately following instruction.

For upper-level program assessment, librarians evaluated 22 research papers with the following results:

SLO 1a	SLO 1b	SLO 2a	SLO 2b	SLO 3a	SLO 4b
81% met standard	86% met standard	54% met standard	54% met standard	45% met standard	50% met standard

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

We also piloted evaluation of 22 RICE presentations / posters using the new General Education Information Literacy SLOs and rubric with the following results:

SLO 1	SLO 2	SLO 3	SLO 4
64% met standard	91% met standard	73% met standard	59% 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 2023-2024 academic year, instruction librarians plan to improve Information Literacy instruction and learning by:

1. Continue diversifying the types of course-level competency-based activities used for instruction.
2. Develop methods to better focus on skill-building for specific student weaknesses identified during competency assessment.
3. Develop methods to better share assessment data with faculty in order to build stronger partnerships with them.

After five years use, we have performed a process analysis of the Information Literacy Assessment Plan and have made adaptions to strengthen it.

The table below summarizes the assessment process the library will use for 2024-2029:

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: LibWizard survey (classroom instruction) LibWizard 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 from senior-level classes that received library instruction and from volunteer student focus groups (behavioral / performative domain learning) Assessment of student responses to focus group questions (affective domain learning)