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Where's the evidence? How we assessed the impact of a scaffolded information literacy curriculum

Graham Lavender, Associate Librarian

Juanita Richardson, Manager

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Learning Resource Centre

M I C H E N E R . C A

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Agenda

  • Introductions
  • Background
  • Methodology
    • IL curriculum
    • Pretest-Posttest
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Future directions

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Meet Graham and Juanita

Graham Lavender, Associate Librarian

  • At Michener for over 5 years
  • Designed and delivered content for this project
  • Interested in information literacy, scholarly communications, and bicycles

Juanita Richardson, Manager

  • At Michener for 6 years
  • I see librarians playing a fundamental role in all aspects of the research life cycle – from generating the idea, through the planning cycle to develop the research concept, engaging in the project cycle to manage the data and output, through the publication cycle, enabling the digital scholarship cycle to ensure the work reaches the global scholarly community

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Meet the Michener Institute

  • Post-secondary institution in downtown Toronto, offering programs in the applied health sciences.
  • Small academic library – Graham and Juanita make up the entire permanent library staff.

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Background

  • Faculty reported that students submitted better assignments after library workshops, but this was only anecdotal
  • How could we demonstrate impact?
  • A faculty member in the Ultrasound program agreed to include 3 library workshops across the Fall, Winter, and Summer semesters.

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https://pixabay.com/vectors/pen-school-notes-grade-memo-162124/

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Methodology – IL Curriculum

  • Scaffolded approach – one workshop in each in-class semester of the Ultrasound program.
  • Based on ACRL Framework
  • Sample topics
    • Fall
      • Search library resources with the “discovery search”
      • Introduction to plagiarism and copyright
    • Winter
      • The peer review process
      • Citing your sources in Vancouver style
    • Summer
      • Advanced use of MeSH in PubMed
      • Grey literature

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Methodology – Pretest-Posttest

  • Evaluation methodology:
  • Assess student knowledge of information literacy concepts
  • Deliver 3 workshops
  • Assess knowledge again

https://pixabay.com/photos/homework-school-problem-number-2521144/

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Designing the Assessment

  • There are existing tools:
    • SAILS
    • ETS iSkills
    • TRAILS
  • None met our requirements, so we created our own, based on the ACRL Framework
  • Mostly multiple choice, delivered via SurveyMonkey by Applied Educational Research department

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https://youtu.be/6KrOwL2YErE

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Results

  • For all questions with an objective correct answer (6 out of 10 questions), more students answered correctly in the posttest.
  • Students were much more likely to agree with “I am confident in my ability to do an effective literature review.”
  • Students indicated they were more likely to approach a librarian for help doing a literature review.

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Example Question

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Discussion

  • Results suggest that students have learned something from our workshops
  • Results are from 2nd iteration (2019-2020)
  • Major improvement over 1st iteration

https://pixabay.com/photos/thumb-success-successful-fan-faust-328420/

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Future Directions

  • Writing new questions
  • Pandemic has opened up opportunities
    • usually a challenge to get time, but with flipped classroom there may be a better chance to get into more programs
  • Micro credentialling

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Questions?

https://pixabay.com/photos/thank-you-feedback-letters-5077738/

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