Upload
vannhan
View
218
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 1
Utah State University Library Instruction Program Annual Report for 2009-‐2010
Wendy Holliday
Coordinator of Library Instruction October 6, 2010
I. Introduction The 2009-‐2010 academic year continued the slight downward trend in the number of library instruction sessions taught by USU librarians. Librarians taught 959 sessions in FY 2010, down from 1,011 in the previous year. We taught around the same number of English 1010 and 2010 classes and fewer subject-‐specific classes. We still reached a large number of students. Librarians documented 19,511 contact hours with students. When accounting for repeat sessions for a single class, we reached 9,961 students. This number is down for the first time in the last several years, suggesting that staff shortages might be influencing the level of outreach and instruction that librarians are able to effectively manage. Subject-‐specific library instruction was the focus of our efforts this year. The Library reorganized its approach to subject librarianship, with a goal of more closely integrating instruction, reference, and outreach activities with collection development. All Subject Librarians now meet monthly and the meeting agenda includes the entire range of subject librarian duties. The Coordinator of Library Instruction now sits on the new Subject Librarian Advisory Committee (SLAC). The first major instruction project for subject librarians was the development of a plan and related outreach and instructional strategies to integrate library instruction into each major at USU. Subject librarians identified classes that might be good candidates for instruction in each major and outlined a tentative framework for reaching out to faculty for advice in shaping and implementing a more cohesive information literacy curriculum. This work is a long-‐range project that will continue over the next few years. II. English 1010 and 2010 We taught slightly fewer ENGL 1010 classes and slightly more ENGL 2010 classes, suggesting that these numbers are fairly stable and sustainable for the near future. There were no major changes in instructional approach for either class. In ENGL 1010, the discourse community assignment was modified to focus more concretely on writing in a career. Students, librarians and instructors continued to struggle with the assignment, however. There was still some confusion about whether students needed to research secondary sources for information about writing in their prospective careers or whether they needed to find examples of writing in their careers. In addition, many English instructors did not like Barefoot Heart, the Common Literature Experience book that is traditionally integrated into the standard ENGL 1010 curriculum. Many instructors dropped the book and, in some cases, the research-‐based assignment related to the book, in the second semester.
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 2
In Fall 2010, 57% of the ENGL 1010 graduate instructors adopted in the entire sequence of proposed library lessons, and all of them participated in library instruction. In spring, there was a decline in the adoption of the complete library sequence, with only 47% of the instructors choosing to use all of the standard lessons. All of the graduate instructors and all but one of the lecturers scheduled some type of library instruction sessions in both Spring and Fall. This suggests that confusion over the standard curriculum and dissatisfaction with the book did not affect new instructors’ views of library instruction in a negative way. The average number of library sessions per section did decline from 4.5 sessions in Fall to 3.1 sessions in Spring. This was because some instructors dropped either the Barefoot Heart project or the Career project. ENGL 2010 instructors also demonstrated a strong commitment to library instruction. Only one instructor declined to schedule any library instruction sessions, a consistent trend for the past several years. The average number of sessions per class section was 2.6 for each semester, nearly identical to the average of 2.8 in FY 2009. The most popular sessions were hands-‐on research days, averaging 1.6 sessions over both semesters. The only significant change was a decline in the number of lessons on developing research questions and an increase in general introductions or overviews of library resources. The development of good research questions is a central learning outcome for the ENGL 2010 library curriculum. We need to watch in the coming year to see if this trend continues and to determine if we are sufficiently addressing this major learning goal in our instruction. Personal consultations resulting from ENGL 2010 library instruction sessions rose from 108 in FY 2009 to 136 in FY 2010. This also represents in increase from 22% to 36% of all research consultations. A small but significant number of ENGL 2010 students made a personal connection with their librarians and follow up with them outside of formal instruction sessions. ENGL 1010 consultations were much lower (34 in FY 2010), but we suspect consultations are consistently under-‐reported by librarians or may take place at the Information Desk. III. Other Course-‐Related Instruction The number of subject-‐specific classes (150) was lower than it has been for the last several years. This downward trend is of some concern because better integration of information literacy into each major is one the library's primary instruction goals. We need to further analyze this trend to determine its causes. Librarians provided subject-‐specific library instruction classes in all of the colleges. Participation rates are high in the colleges of Business, Natural Resources, Education and Human Services, and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. The College of Engineering and the College of Science utilize formal library instruction less frequently, although the departments of Biology and Chemistry and Biochemistry regularly schedule instruction for upper division courses. See Table 1.
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 3
College Number of Departments
Percent of departments participating in library
instruction College of Agriculture 5 80% Huntsman School of Business 4 100% College of Education and Human Services 7 86% College of Engineering 5 20% College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 12 75% College of Natural Resources 3 100% College of Science* 7 43% *Including the WSU-‐USU Nursing program Table 1: Library Instruction by College Fewer Connections sessions were offered this year, so the library taught 73 sessions, compared to 81 in FY 2009. Pam Martin continues to do an excellent job in scheduling these sessions and coordinating and training library staff to teach them. Feedback from student evaluations continues to be positive. 69.3% of students said that they would be very likely or likely to ask a librarian for help as a result of the sessions. Librarians also taught 25 sessions for ENGL 1010 concurrent enrollment classes offered through local high schools. The sessions, which combine lessons on brainstorming research questions, using library databases to search for information, proper citation, and a library tour, remain popular. IV. Special Projects The library reorganized its approach and structure for librarianship, and instruction took on a more prominent role in the overall duties of subject librarians. Wendy Holliday, as Coordinator of Library Instruction joined the new Subject Librarian Advisory Committee, providing functional expertise and leadership in instruction-‐related initiatives. The goal of the reorganization is to more closely align all areas of subject librarianship, including collection development, reference and outreach, and instruction. Curriculum mapping and planning was the major instruction-‐related project for subject librarians for FY 2010. The goal is to reach students in each major more effectively. In some majors, students sit through multiple sessions that repeat the same material. In other cases we do not reach majors for any formal instruction. Librarians reviewed the general catalog for major requirements and course descriptions in order to identify classes that might benefit from library instruction. Librarians focused on classes that are required and that include a research project or some type of introduction to research methods or "ways of knowing" in the discipline. Librarians also identified capstone courses or other classes that required a major project at the senior level. Librarians then used this list of classes to develop a rough instruction framework that identified possible approaches to library instruction in each class and strategies for reaching out to faculty to implement the plan. Most librarians had completed a plan by the end of FY 2010, and implementation and refinements of the plans will continue in the coming year.
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 4
V. LibGuides The popularity of LibGuides continues to increase among our users. Librarians have created 438 guides to date. These guides received a total of 121,374 hits last year, compared to 79,659 the year before. As of July 2010, there were 195 active course-‐related guides. The average number of hits per guide was 277, up slightly from 2009. We calculated the number of hits per student for each course-‐related guide, using the enrollment figures for the class. Course-‐related guides received an average of 12 hits per student, similar to previous years. The most intensively used guides, based on hits per student, are listed in Table 2. These guides are all for upper-‐division and graduate level courses in specific majors or programs, suggesting that students find this kind of personalized assistance especially useful when engaged in more intensive research at this level.
Guide Total Hits Hits/Student HIST 4990: Political Culture (Jones) 419 83.8
ED 6550 1,272 79.5
NFS 4020: Advanced Nutrition 1,657 41.4
MIS 4550: Larsen 1,440 41.1
MGT 4590 Global Marketing Strategies: Dr. Stafford 1,618 40.5
ECON 3010: Pricing Strategy 1,082 36.1
MUSC 4310 319 29.0
HIST 3130: Ancient Greece 1,120 28.7
EDUC 6570 -‐ Susan Friedman 485 28.5
ENVS 6000 /ENVS 7000 196 28.0
Table 2: Top LibGuides based on hits per student VI. Statistics General trends in the numbers and types of library sessions have remained relatively stable over the last few years. There is a slight downward trend in the number of library sessions, which is probably driven by an effort to manage librarians' workloads during a time of staffing shortages and because of changes in curriculum and assignments for specific classes. The PSY 1730 class, for example, has further streamlined its curriculum, and library research is no longer required for most of the sections. See Table 3.
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 5
English 1010 English 2010 PSY 1730 Connections Subject Other FY 2010 413 277 1 73 150 18 FY 2009 430 269 11 81 167 29 FY 2008 478 354 40 71 197 42 FY 2007 442 380 37 70 174 42 FY 2006 314 248 42 50 160 60
Table 3: Summary of Library Instruction Classes Departments in the College of Business and the College of Education and Human Services remained heavy users of library instruction. In both cases, required classes for the major included a research component (MIS 2200 and ELED 3000). Specific departments within the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences also continue to bring multiple classes to the library for instruction. One trend of note this year was the jump in the number of library instruction sessions for the College of Natural Resources (CNR). Quinney Library Director Susanne Clement has done an excellent job in reaching out to CNR faculty.
Department College
Number of classes in FY 2010
Number of classes in FY 2009
MIS BUS 19 15 EDUC and TEAL ED 18 16 FCHD ED 10 7 WILD NR 10 5 ANTH HASS 9 6 HIST HASS 7 9 English (except 1010 and 2010) HASS 6 20 ENVS NR 6 1 MGMT BUS 6 6
Table 4: Most frequent library instruction sessions, by department We decided to modify our recordkeeping in FY2010 in order to drop some categories and add others that might be more meaningful for program planning and collection development. We added a category to keep track of sessions taught for distance classes, most often through interactive broadcast. We taught ten of these sessions this year. Librarians and library peer mentors also spent an estimated 40-‐80 hours working with students individually in ENGL 1010 and 2010 classes taught asynchronously through Blackboard. To help inform collection development decisions, librarians recorded whether they taught students about print resources. Seventy-‐one sessions (or 7% of the total number of sessions) included some instruction in print resources. It is not clear how accurate this number is, given that some librarians do not fill out the statistics form for each class as completely as others.
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 6
We dropped the content category (databases, catalog, free web, and other) because librarians thought the category options emphasized tools rather than other information literacy skills, such as developing research questions or approaching research as an iterative process. The new categories for content are skill (such as keyword searching), process or concept (such as developing research questions), introduction to disciplinary tools, and general orientation. Sessions often included more than one type of content, so an orientation to a major might also include instruction on how to use disciplinary tools. Slightly more than half of the sessions focused on skills (505), but nearly half of the sessions (407) addressed processes or concepts. See Table 5. The most common format of instruction was hands-‐on, followed closely by demonstration or lecture. See Table 6. This has changed little in recent years. The only noticeable change in the ACRL Information Literacy Standards covered was the decline in Standard Three (evaluation of information). See Table 7. Librarians seem to be focused less explicitly on evaluation skills, possibly because many current students have been exposed to the website evaluation criteria since elementary school. In some cases, librarians are more closely linking evaluation with the discovery and use of information, rather than as a discrete process of applying a checklist of criteria to individual sources.
Table 5: Content of Instruction Table 6: Format of Instruction
ACRL Standards FY 2010 FY 2009 One 604 823 Two 661 707 Three 195 477 Four 184 109 Five 26 20
Table 7: ACRL Standards Covered Each librarian in the Reference Services Department taught an average of 84 classes, down slightly from previous years, reflecting the overall drop in the number of library sessions. Librarians from other departments taught 104 classes, up slightly from recent years. Librarians spent 387.5 hours prepping for library instruction sessions, averaging .40 hours for each hour of in-‐class time. This number is down from last year's average of 0.62 but this could be a simple matter of incomplete reporting by librarians. Librarians recorded 360 research consultations, totaling 192 hours of time, although this is a conservative estimate, as some librarians do not regularly log research consultations in the LibStats database. The total number of consultations was down from 480 last year, but the time spent with students increased slightly. Librarians were spending more time with fewer students. Librarians spent an estimated 1,538.5 hours on direct instructional activities.
Content # of classes Format # of classes Skill 505 Hands-‐On/Active 692 Process/concept 407 Demonstration/lecture 578 Disciplinary Tools 234 Tours 45 Orientation 205 Other 261
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 7
VII. Assessment There were no major assessment projects this year. We decided not to conduct a large paper evaluation or citation analysis because we had found similar results for the last several years. We also needed time to gear up for a larger assessment project to measure student learning over time and across the entire curriculum, not just in ENGL 1010 and 2010. In the spring and summer, we began the planning process for a major assessment project using the VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) information literacy rubric, developed as part of the Association of American College’s and Universities’ project, Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP). Wendy Holliday worked with the Office of Analysis, Assessment, and Accreditation to design a project using these rubrics to assess student learning at various stages of the undergraduate curriculum. Librarians continued to conduct formative assessments in the classroom through quick surveys, for example, to see what students valued from a particular session and what remained muddy or confusing to them. Librarians also talked with faculty members to assess how students' were meeting instructors' expectations for information literacy. All of these informal assessments are part of librarians' general practice and results are cycled back into the classroom as librarians make changes to their approach based on feedback from students and faculty. VIII. Goals The Instruction Program will work on three major goals in the coming year: 1) rigorously assess students’ information literacy learning across the curriculum; 2) refine our approach to instruction in ENGL 1010 and 2010 to promote deeper engagement with information and learning, rather than only finding sources; and 3) begin refining and implementing the information literacy plans developed by subject librarians for each major. We will do the following to achieve these goals:
• Complete first pilot phase of VALUE rubric assessment project. This will include getting a large sample of ENGL 1010 papers in Fall 2010 and a sample of ENGL 2010 papers in Spring 2011. Subject librarians will identify potential samples of capstone work in the majors. Data analysis will take place in spring and summer of 2011.
• Improve librarians’ documentation of their instruction work. Some librarians consistently under-‐report their research consultations, preparation time, and classes that occur outside of the library. We need to do a better job of documenting the time-‐intensive practice of one-‐on-‐one teaching. We also need to find ways to link this data to student learning outcomes.
• Work with the Writing Program to assess the new ENGL 1010 curriculum and consider new approaches to instruction in ENGL 2010.
Merrill-‐Cazier Library Instruction Program Annual Report 2010 8
• Reach out to faculty in each major to get feedback on our information literacy instruction plans, develop or refine information literacy learning goals for each major, and design and implement instructional strategies to meet these learning goals. This is a long-‐term process that will take longer in some majors than others, depending on a department’s existing relationship with the library and challenges particular to each discipline.