Putting Assessment in its Place

1. Putting Assessment in its Place Creating and Implementing a Campus-Wide Information Literacy Rubric Kimberly.Detterbeck@purchase.edu Darcy.Gervasio@purchase.edu Rebecca.Oling@purchase.edu CIT 2013 - SUNYIT Utica - May 23, 2013

2. Assessment Options We Explored • Most costly (min. $35/test) • Requires a proctor • Difficult to ensure seniors' participation • Too costly (extra fee for results summary) • Requires a proctor • Time consuming (75 minute test) • Difficult to ensure seniors' participation • Questions too rigid (some scenarios not relevant and/or applicable to our library) • Inability to customize results • Difficult to ensure seniors' participation

3. What is the Senior Project? • Purchase's capstone research project • Graduation requirement for all seniors • Culmination of 4 years of liberal arts education • Takes many forms: original research thesis, performance, poetry, film, art show, choreography, etc. • Housed in print & digital formats in library archives

4. ACRL Information Literacy Competencies http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency

5. Senior Projects Information Literacy Skills Assessment Rubric (SPILSA) - Round 1

6. Matching SPILSA Rubric to Institutional Assessment Goals • Won Purchase Assessment Award, 2012 • Associate Provost suggested enlarging the scope • Administration asked us to align rubric with SUNY Student Learning Outcomes for "basic communication, critical thinking, and information management."

7. Senior Project Information Literacy Skills Assessment Rubric - Round 2 • We culled the SUNY SLOs for items that fit information literacy and the ACRL Info. Lit. Competencies • We standardized the language and revised our rubric to align it with institutional assessment goals • We added a 4th level, "Exceeding Expectations" to our rubric to reflect SUNY SLOs.

8. ACRL Standards meet SUNY SLOs

9. SPILSA Rewrite with SLOs

10. A Closer Look...

11. Using Rubric in

12. Next Steps • Find faculty collaborator knowledgeable about norming, calculating a random sample, statistics • Hold "norming session" for training...and actually test assessment on a proper sample • Host a "scoring party" to assess • Review process challenges • Long term goal: longitudinal assessment over 4-years applying SPILSA rubric to College Writing to compare IL skills of freshmen with seniors

13. Advice & Best Practices You can do it too! Here's how! • Small but meaningful segments of student population • Scale it up later • Use what you've got! Access will be one of the largest obstacles, so assess research products, populations, assignments you already have easy access to • You don't need to be an assessment “guru.” (Use local talents and skills) • Focus on assessments that will provide data & results specific enough to actually be useful for improving instruction

14. Questions? View our Senior Projects Information Literacy Skills Assessment Rubric online: Our SPILSA Rubric: http://tinyurl.com/SPILSARubric ALA Information Literacy Comptencies: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency Purchase's interpretation of SUNY Student Learning Outcomes: http://www.purchase.edu/Departments/AcademicPrograms/CoreCurriculum/newgenedrequirements.aspx#slos SUNY Student Learning Outcomes (note numbering differs): http://www.suny.edu/provost/academic_affairs/LearningOutcomes.cfm Critical Thinking SLOs Rubric from SUNY: http://www.suny.edu/provost/academic_affairs/CriticalThinkingRubric.cfm