Putting Assessment in its Place Creating and Implementing a Campus-Wide Information Literacy Rubric CIT SUNYIT Utica - May 23, 2013

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

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

ACRL Information Literacy Competencies nformationliteracycompetency

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

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."

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.

ACRL Performance Indicator and Outcome: SUNY Learning Outcome: 1. The information literate student defines and articulates the need for information... b. Develops a thesis statement and formulates questions based on the information need 1. Students will produce coherent texts within common college level forms... "Writer presents an easily identifiable and focused controlling purpose or thesis." ACRL Standards meet SUNY SLOs

SPILSA Rewrite with SLOs

A Closer Look...

Using Rubric in

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

Advice & Best Practices You can do it too! Here's how! o Small but meaningful segments of student population o Scale it up later o 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 o You don't need to be an assessment “guru.” (Use local talents and skills) o Focus on assessments that will provide data & results specific enough to actually be useful for improving instruction

Questions? View our Senior Projects Information Literacy Skills Assessment Rubric online: Our SPILSA Rubric : ALA Information Literacy Comptencies: Purchase's interpretation of SUNY Student Learning Outcomes: wgenedrequirements.aspx#slos SUNY Student Learning Outcomes (note numbering differs): Critical Thinking SLOs Rubric from SUNY: