This month’s issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship features the research findings of Barbara Junisbai, M. Sara Lowe and our own Natalie Tagge, Education Services Librarian at the Ginsburg Health Sciences Library. Natalie and I talked about her compelling assessment project and its implications for practicing a more strategic approach to library instruction.
Nancy: What was the research question that you had?
Natalie: Well, the abstract to the paper nicely sums it up. We were looking to assess the impact of programmatic changes and librarian course integration on students’ information literacy skills.
Nancy: Since the research was conducted at your former library, can you tell me a bit about the school and the context for the research?
Natalie: Sure. Our study was conducted at Pitzer College, one of five undergraduate colleges that make up The Claremont Colleges. The library serves as the academic core for all the colleges. Of course each of the colleges has a personality, Pitzer is informally known as the “hippy” school! It’s small (1000 students) and the focus is on liberal arts college with strengths in environmental and interdisciplinary studies. All the students across Claremont are required to take a First Year Seminar and the seminar includes broad learning goals that include information literacy.
Nancy: How did you decide on your methodology?
Natalie: We wanted to use a rubric for a couple of reasons. We knew we wanted to look at research papers, the final product of the First Year Seminar. Rubric assessment is a good way for multiple people to evaluation/score work. Papers were collected from three consecutive years of First Year Seminar classes, a total of 337 papers from 44 courses. The librarian component for these classes changed between 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively, allowing us to gauge impact of the librarian engagement with the class on the quality of student work, as expressed in the final paper.
Nancy: How did you develop the rubric you used?
Natalie: We didn’t want to re-invent the wheel. Carleton College had already developed a rubric that was well aligned with the ACRL (Association of Research and College Libraries) standards for information literacy. The rubric is designed to assess written work in three areas: attribution; evaluation of sources and communication of evidence (integration of sources into the paper). We asked for permission to edit and use Carleton’s tool, and also had the opportunity to review it with Megan Oakleaf, who is an expert in rubrics and instruction assessment (Meganoakleaf.info/publications.html).
Natalie: In addition to applying a rubric to the papers, the final product of these classes, the degree of librarian involvement was scored on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being no involvement and 4 representing practically a co-teaching arrangement. This method was to determine the optimal mix of librarian involvement that would yield positive results on student papers.
Nancy: Will you tell me about your findings?
Natalie: Faculty collaboration with librarian had a demonstrated impact on student IL skills. But there is a faculty librarian collaboration “sweet spot” which is the “intermediate level” of collaboration.
This can include many things. For instance, the librarian is listed on the course syllabus as a trusted resource. There is often an online course guide. Ideally, the librarian visits the class twice – the first time to introduce the library and the second time to conduct an assignment-related session. Often there will be a course assignment that includes use of the library – like a bibliography attached to the paper. This proved to be was the optimal level of involvement, the most strategic. Librarians self-reported this information, but we also used our instruction statistics.
Faculty also needed to hear this message – that assignment design, and a strategic instruction session, is the most impactful for improving students’ information literacy skills.
Nancy: How did you use the results of the research?
Natalie: We presented to faculty the findings as a way of advocating for the benefits of library instruction. The research served as a basis for discussions with faculty. For instance, the one short session does not appear to be the best – a little bit more librarian involvement would lead to good gains in information literacy.
Nancy: Do you have thoughts on how this research would translate here at Temple?
Natalie: Temple has a very different population, and in particular, the students served by the health sciences library. So we need to look at the classes and the possibilities within the curriculum, being strategic and targeting the classes we spend time providing outreach to.
Nancy: Thanks, Natalie. Important research. I like especially that you used it to work with faculty to dialog about the different ways, and most strategic ways, librarians could work with their class and students. Thanks for sharing.