1 of 8

Learning the Lay of the Land: Defining and Documenting Where Instruction Happens in Order to Target Program Improvement

Steve Borrelli, Strategic Assessment Librarian

Corey Johnson, Head Library Instruction

Washington State University - Pullman

2 of 8

First Attempts at�Collecting and Organizing�Library Instruction Teaching Data

Living under the Dreaded D-8 Form
Satisfying National Organizations
Pursuing an appropriate AMS

It is an ongoing challenge to comprehensively record and organize library instruction sessions, let alone effectively using this data for strategic decision making.

At WSU, we have been collecting this data for several decades

Early on we used our local D-8 form, which produced only limited success because of too much granularity

Librarians recorded individual tasks and time in creating all curricular materials, measurement that went well beyond just recording “time in class”

As the focus on teaching related activities grew, all work essentially needed to be recorded

Later, the pendulum swung to the other side and we focused solely on satisfying the basic aggregate statistical requirements of national organizations like ARL, ACRL and NCES; now we had too little granularity.

We began looking for a middle path and for a commercial or open-source “Assessment Management System” (AMS); we ultimately found these products beyond our scope, as they concentrated on institution level needs.

3 of 8

Three Purposes of the LISD

Impact on Learning
Satisfy Reporting Needs
Discovery of Trends

4 of 8

Key Questions

What constitutes an instruction session?
What constitutes online instruction?

5 of 8

Our stats before the LISD

Number of sessions by type/total
Users served by type/total

Let me tell you a bit about the technology and development of the LISD

The LISD was developed using Django, a Python web framework which feeds a MYSQL database. Our public interface is coded in PHP.

This is the reality of developing in a library, you use the talents you have,
When we started we had PYTHON in-house expertise, by the time we finished our in-house expertise was more focused in PHP, so that is why the front end and back end differ.
Fortunately, both PYTHON and PHP work well with a MYSQL database so it all works fine

That’s the technology, now the data we collect and why

We spent a lot of time thinking about and acknowledging local culture and the non-reporting behavior that we’d developed over several years. We knew what we wanted to collect needed to be the bare minimum to meet our needs or it wouldn’t fly.

We determined that that minimum information to be: course, section, and instructor
We’re fortunate that most of our instruction happens in library classrooms, so instead of asking people to report it, we harvest it from outlook calendar events for instruction in the libraries,

Which additionally gives us dates of instruction
With this information anything else we needed related to the who, what, when, where, type questions we could figure out using other sources

This is really helping us better understand our instructional offerings

Because our practices had reduced to the point of supporting outside reporting needs, we only knew sessions and users served

Basically by tweaking our data collecting practices to include courses, and section we now know not just sessions and users but:

6 of 8

7 of 8

With the LISD we now know

Total number of sessions delivered

Sessions by “type” (local distinction)
In-person and online sessions
Sessions by course level (100, 200, etc.)

Total users served

In-person and online sessions
By campus

Number of Unique courses in which instruction was delivered

By format (in-person / online)
Courses by course level
By College
By Department

8 of 8

What we still have to learn from the LISD data

Who we are reaching:

Which students were reached in which courses
The frequency with which students are getting access to LI

Begin to analyze for impact on:

GPA
Retention

Who’s falling through the cracks:

Identify the majors in which instruction opportunities are few

Refine processes as we better understand and define what speaks to our institution