Information Access Course Assessment Mentoring SessionLoren Rhodes, IA faculty of record

Presentation Plan Brief history and structure of the Information Access course Current objectives and content Course assessments used Pre- and post- attitude/skills assessment survey questions Preliminary results Assessment mentoring, your feedback

[NOTE: the opportunity to discuss the IA course objectives and content will occur in another learning community!]

IA History

Previous curriculum (1990s) a college-wide requirement: Intro to Computers (3 cr.)

Early implementation of current curriculum ca. 1999 IA integrated into CWS and Extended Orientation (5 cr.)

part of CWS grade Included basic library research IA competencies to be utilized in CWS (Ideally)

Ca. 2003 IA became its own 1 credit course

IA Course organization 33 sections fall semester, 2 in spring semester 2-3 sections in fall designated for international students 16 students maximum per section Students expected to use own laptops Currently in computer labs

Staffing One “faculty of record” 1 administrative student assistant year-round (full time summer) ~15 student assistants for the fall semester

IA Calendar Summer orientation (email acct, Moodle access, registration) Option to work on Microsoft office competencies during

summer Fall semester all sections sync’d on a Monday-Sunday week Students can work ahead, but expected to make additional

progress each week Attendance required until all competencies completed Finish by early November

IA Goals To verify and/or ensure that students have base line

technology and library skills to function as a student academically at Juniata. Specifically, students are able to connect to the network, print,

understand ethical use of technology and the internet, and use the Office suite and [Google Docs] for email, word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

Library skills include understanding the library facilities, electronic searching and proper use of citations.

Not a goal: IA has also become a favorite venue for conducting surveys of the first year students over the years.

IA Competencies PC Basics, Eaglenet connectivity and Security Netiquette and Eaglenet policies Microsoft Outlook 2010 (+Mac version) Microsoft Word 2010 (+Mac version) Microsoft Excel 2010 (+Mac version) Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 (+Mac version) Windows Movie Maker (or iMovie) Windows Publisher 2010 Google Docs Understanding information literacy and using the Beeghly

Library Juniata College Resources Sustainability review and survey. Other surveys, assessments

IA Library Module Cannot start in summer 4 mini-modules each with a quiz Must read through materials before quiz; 3 attempts possible This work done before library visit 5th week all sections visit library Library project consists of electronic searching for

Beeghly monographs, On-line/printed journal articles Internet resources

Turn in an annotated bibliography with proper citations. ~20% for the quizzes and citation document.

IA Competency Word example Text on title page is Vertically and Horizontally centered Student's name and ID are on title page Body font size is 10-pt. and Calibri font is used Line spacing is set to double-space JC Eagle image placed to left of first paragraph and is properly

labeled Excel chart is pasted in text box to right of second paragraph Organization chart is placed as a drawing to right of Drawing

Section. Left, Right, Top, Bottom margins are all set to 0.5" This is the

Narrow Setting Page numbers in bottom right corner of every page except

title page

IA Competency Word example Headers include name, ID#, and date on every page but title

page Synonym for ‘convert’ (first sentence of columns section) Footnote added after first sentence of columns section

Footnote reads: "Bard, Information Access Guide …." 3 columns X 4 rows table is inserted

First column has Names Second column has Titles Third column has Phone Extensions Table border thickness is set to 1 1/2 pt. thick

Columns section is displayed as two columns

[All in a 3 page document]

IA Competency Excel example[Calculates semester GPAs]Student's Name and ID are in cells B1 and D1 respectivelyGrade Equivalence column filled according to table. cell F4 has formula =C4*E4 cells F5:F9 have formulas =C5*E5, … , =C9*F9 cell C10 has formula =SUM(C4:C9) cell F10 has formula =SUM(F4:F9) cell F12 has formula =F10/C10 course titles are left justified in cells column titles are centered in cellsall numbers have 2 decimal places

IA Competency Excel example bar graph from corners D15:H24 (represents grade

equivalences.) Fall worksheet is copied to a second sheet and labeled as

Spring Course data is entered according to assignment A31 has words "Overall GPA" cell B31 has formula =(F9+Fall!F10)/(C9+Fall!C10) cell A32 has conditional if-statement

=IF(F11 >= 3.6, "Dean's List", "Not Dean's List") Question #1: Answer is 3.10 Question #2: Answer is No. It

does it for you. Question #3: Answer is 3.17

IA Materials Moodle used as Course Management System Moodle available at Summer Orientation and continues

through the summer Posting of competencies available through Moodle or email

to ia@juniata.edu IA Guide and syllabus Library content are mostly loaded into Moodle

Reading Video

IA Guide About 200 pages for both Windows 7 and Mac OS Revised yearly All necessary material to do the competencies are in the

guide Available as e-book since 2011. $10. Most buy, many never

opened!

Aversion to reading either format. Ebook hard to display content AND apply it on same screen Guide preparation late spring

IA Assessment: content choice Driven by a number of factors Current technologies used as standard at Juniata Need for full connectivity to resources (shares, printers) What students bring on their laptops (latest version) What is generally used in the classroom “I won’t be using Excel” (You know this as a freshman that in

5 years…?)

Colleague suggestions Assessment needs (e.g. Google Docs, recently) Assistants interviews and discussions at staff meetings

IA Pre- and Post- AssessmentSurveyFall 2011 data collected as a first iteration (technical glitches prior)Demographic data (summer and pre-)Technology ownership data (summer and pre-)Attitudinal and self rating (pre-/post-)Skills (pre-/post-)

Pre-assessment conducted during first two weeks of fall classes. (33 questions)Post-assessment conducted after all competencies are completed. (30 questions)

Dataset challenges Moodle export into Excel for charts, but… 350 rows of data 90 columns Some students not do post- survey, some not pre- survey Limited to overall statistics Need to put into database for complex retrievals and

comparisons of pre- and post- responses per student

IA Self-rating

High self-ratings

Medium self-ratings

Low self-ratings

Combined self-rating

Word Skills Assessment

You need to force the text that follows the cursor to start on a new printed page. This is best accomplished by:

A. Pressing the Control-Enter (or Control-Return) key combination

B. Pressing enough Enter (or Return) keystrokes so that the text falls on the next page

C. Clicking on the Page Layout tab and changing the margins

D. Changing the spacing of the paragraph to have extra lines precede it

E. Clicking on the Insert tab and choose Header

Word Skills Assessment

40% to 53%

Excel Skills Assessment If cell B4 contains 20, cell C4 contains 5,

and cell D4 contains =B4+C4*2, what is displayed in D4?A. "=B4+C4*2"

B. "20+5*2"

C. 30

D. 50

E. #ERROR

Excel Skills Assessment If cell B4 contains 20, cell C4 contains 5,

and cell D4 contains =B4+C4*2, what is displayed in D4?A. "=B4+C4*2"

B. "20+5*2"

C. 30

D. 50

E. #ERROR

If cell D4 contains =B4 + $C$4 * 2, and you copy and paste the contents from D4 to D5, what formula is then in D5?A. =B4 + $C$4 * 2

B. =B5 + $C$4 * 2

C. =B4 + $C$5 * 2

D. =B5 + $C$5 * 2

E. =B5 + $D$5 * 2

Excel Skills Assessment

46% to 62%

No significant change

Network Share Self-ratingHow comfortable are you with connecting to network drives (share/folders) and printers?

Miscellaneous Attitudinal QuestionsI feel confident using personal computers.

Miscellaneous Attitudinal QuestionsI get anxious about having to learn a new application (such as Excel or Movie Maker)

IA Additional Thoughts Initial pass for assessment questions Some questions expected to have little improvement Pre- assessment is conducted, for some, after they have

worked on the competencies in the summer (<20%) Many skills may be honed in other courses than IA; IA can’t

take all the credit…or the blame.

IA Q&A and Feedback

Thanks to Jerry Kruse and Kirk Baumgarten for some of the data crunching and graphics