Information Literacy Assessment Reports: Home

2021-2022 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 2021-2022 academic year, the library provided 43 orientation sessions, 75 class instruction sessions (Div I – 7; Div II – 47; Div III – 7, DLM 110/120 - 14), 296 scheduled reference appointments and 478 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 2021-2022 academic year, 447 students completed the survey and 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 2021-2022 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 2021-2022 academic year, 1074 of 1172 (91.63%) 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 capstone project and upper-level data through the analysis of 500-level student research projects using  rubrics.

In the 2021-2022 academic year, 86% of the FYC student sample found an article for their capstone project that met the criteria of the assignment. This exceeds the assessment goal for this SLO that 80% of students could successfully complete that task. 80% of the sample correctly cited their article, which meets the goal that 80% of students would correctly cite their article. 86% applied at least 4 of the 6 PROVEN criteria to evaluate their source, which exceeds the goal that 80% would adequately apply PROVEN evaluation criteria.

For upper-level program assessment, librarians evaluated fifty 500-level research papers from THR, ARH, ANT/SOC, EDU, BIO and DSC (11 Division I papers, 19 Division II papers and 20 Division III papers) in the 2021-2022 academic year. Looking solely at the Div III papers, all of the SLOs set by the assessment plan were met. Looking all the Div I, II and III papers together, we see the following results:

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

Improvement plan

Based on the data gathered during satisfaction and competency-based assessment in the 2021-2022 academic year, instruction librarians plan to improve Information Literacy instruction and learning by:

1. Consistently providing the links for satisfaction-based assessment to all students and faculty; providing class time to complete the survey; and communicating the importance of completing the survey in order to improve our response rate.
2. Promote Information Literacy Instruction to Div I and Div III to increase instruction in those Divisions.
3. Diversify the types of course-level competency based activities used for assessment.
4. Work 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.

Based on a process analysis of the Information Literacy Assessment Plan, instruction librarians will improve the assessment process by:

1. Evaluating additional methods to gather assessment data (ex. additional satisfaction metrics and alternate access points to gather competency-based assessment artifacts).
2. Re-assessing our SLOs to ensure they align with faculty expectations.
3. Developing a dashboard to transparently communicate library assessment results.