Information Literacy Assessment Reports: Home

2024-2025 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 lifelong 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 2024-2025 academic year, the library provided 43 orientation sessions and 74 class instruction sessions, reaching 721 distinct students (Div I – 10 in-class sessions; Div II – 25 in-class sessions; Div III – 11 in-class sessions, DLM 110/120/310 - 28 in-class sessions). We also instructed students during 300 scheduled reference appointments and 409 drop-in reference consultations, reaching 205 distinct students.

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 measures student and faculty satisfaction with the quality and content of library instruction. Instruction librarians use LibWizard surveys to gather student feedback on instruction satisfaction. In the 2024-2025 academic year, 265 in-class students and 19 one-on-one students completed the survey and 96-99% 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). This met our student-satisfaction goal that 80% of students would Strongly agree/Agree that our instruction met all four standards.

Instruction librarians also use LibWizard to survey faculty regarding their satisfaction with library instruction. In the 2024-2025 academic year, 9 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 because of in-class or one-on-one 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 2024-2025 academic year, 828 of 859 students (96.39%) who performed an assessment activity achieved at least 75% on that activity. This meets the library’s goal that 75% of students assessed would achieve at least a 75% on the classroom assessment activity.

In 2024-2025, librarians randomly assessed 81 of the 205 distinct students participating in 100-300 level one-on-one instruction sessions. We used rubrics to categorize students’ performance level on specified skills with the following results:

Define a topic – 49% performed the skill at the intermediate or superior level

Find primary sources –33% performed the skill at the intermediate or superior level

Find secondary sources –25% performed the skill at the intermediate or superior level

Evaluate sources –57% performed the skill at the intermediate or superior level

Synthesize sources –71% performed the skill at the intermediate or superior level

Cite sources –48% performed the skill at the intermediate or superior level

 This provides valuable base-line competency data to 1) help librarians identify what skills students need to develop; and 2) compare to program-level assessment data (below).

Competency-based program-level assessment

Program-level assessment examines student learning across their academic career to provide a summative assessment of what graduates have learned. It is based on defined student learning outcomes (SLOs). Instruction librarians gather Information Literacy program-level assessment data from two sources: assessment of student performance during 400-500 level one-on-one instruction sessions and the analysis of student research projects using rubrics.

In the 2024-2025 academic year, librarians evaluated 23 400-500 level one-on-one instruction sessions with the following results:

Librarians evaluated 46 400-500 level research papers or RICE presentations with the following results:

Our goal is that 75% of one-on-one sessions or papers would meet each standard.

Improvement plan

Based on the data gathered during satisfaction and competency-based assessment in the 2024-2025 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 an information literacy workshop series to reach more students.
4. Develop methods to better share assessment data with faculty to build stronger partnerships with them.