Previously on this blog
A lot has happened since I last posted. In August.
We added new librarians: Although our department seems to never be fully staffed (because of good things, like job promotions!), and sometimes change is hard, it's great having new people around asking why we do something a certain way. Critique shakes things up, and I like it. I also don't have time to read all of the things, so it's helpful to have new energetic people point out must-reads and share conference insights.
I've been thinking about how to display our assessment results virtually without creating a rabbit hole of links and sub-pages. This has included conversations with our integrated digital services librarian. I'm also trying to layout the content in a way that make the most sense for people most interested in the data. This will be my summer project.
Organization!
After taking this role last summer, I had lots and lots of files to
sort through. All of this was on my personal drive. In the spirit of
transparency and institutional memory, I've transferred it all to the
shared drive, and continue to update files from there. That way,
everyone in my department (and library staff outside of my department)
can see all the things. I've relabeled folders - some of them with names
like "Pre-2009 documents" which might be less helpful but removes some
of the clutter.
General Education. As I've mentioned before, information literacy is a graduation requirement at my university. This manifests itself in a variety of ways on our campus. Currently our 3-credit Introduction to Information Literacy is a co/pre-req. for the sophomore seminar course. Transfer students can meet the graduation requirement in courses identified as "information literacy intensive" in their major. Ideally students do both of those things to scaffold the student learning outcomes for our program. Since January I've been on a general education task force, looking at revamping our school's gen ed requirements to make it more transfer friendly. I think a lot of good changes are coming, once the plan is approved. It impacts information literacy a little:
The bad - we'll see less students in our 3 credit course, since it will now just be a freshmen requirement (fewer than 24 credits) instead of sophomore. Since we're primarily a transfer school, we don't have a large native population. This will just incentivize me to work more closely with our community colleges [cue silver lining].
The good - we're modeling a lot of our graduation requirements for other areas like communications, technology fluency and global awareness on the information literacy model. This will mean there will be more accountability overall for graduation requirements, and courses flagged with meeting the information literacy requirement will need to meet a shared set of learning outcomes. Because this gen ed model is still baking in the oven, I've already drafted some information literacy student learning outcomes (or SLOs for those in the know) for courses in the majors:
Some professional development: I took an SPSS course on Lynda.com (through my university system's subscription). It was actually really helpful, especially when I could pause the session and practice on my own data set. Now I just need a refresher on how to interpret various tests I'm running. I also led a day-long workshop for a regional library system on assessment. It really motivated to read the stacks of papers and books on assessment that I've been meaning to get to. Next post I'll share a reading list.
I've also been traveling, reading, teaching, serving on committees, working on another paper, and more teaching, sponsoring a librarian duckpin bowling night, and worrying about the presidential election (make sure you vote! The Maryland primary is at the end of April.). Blogging was not on that list. I'm trying to add it back in so it doesn't just become a summer thing.
We added new librarians: Although our department seems to never be fully staffed (because of good things, like job promotions!), and sometimes change is hard, it's great having new people around asking why we do something a certain way. Critique shakes things up, and I like it. I also don't have time to read all of the things, so it's helpful to have new energetic people point out must-reads and share conference insights.
I've been thinking about how to display our assessment results virtually without creating a rabbit hole of links and sub-pages. This has included conversations with our integrated digital services librarian. I'm also trying to layout the content in a way that make the most sense for people most interested in the data. This will be my summer project.
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| It'll make the website pretty. |
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| Leslie Knope gets me. |
General Education. As I've mentioned before, information literacy is a graduation requirement at my university. This manifests itself in a variety of ways on our campus. Currently our 3-credit Introduction to Information Literacy is a co/pre-req. for the sophomore seminar course. Transfer students can meet the graduation requirement in courses identified as "information literacy intensive" in their major. Ideally students do both of those things to scaffold the student learning outcomes for our program. Since January I've been on a general education task force, looking at revamping our school's gen ed requirements to make it more transfer friendly. I think a lot of good changes are coming, once the plan is approved. It impacts information literacy a little:
The bad - we'll see less students in our 3 credit course, since it will now just be a freshmen requirement (fewer than 24 credits) instead of sophomore. Since we're primarily a transfer school, we don't have a large native population. This will just incentivize me to work more closely with our community colleges [cue silver lining].
The good - we're modeling a lot of our graduation requirements for other areas like communications, technology fluency and global awareness on the information literacy model. This will mean there will be more accountability overall for graduation requirements, and courses flagged with meeting the information literacy requirement will need to meet a shared set of learning outcomes. Because this gen ed model is still baking in the oven, I've already drafted some information literacy student learning outcomes (or SLOs for those in the know) for courses in the majors:
- Students will be able to demonstrate an ability to successfully identify and navigate discipline-specific resources.
- Students will be able to apply discipline-specific evaluation criteria to an information source.
Some professional development: I took an SPSS course on Lynda.com (through my university system's subscription). It was actually really helpful, especially when I could pause the session and practice on my own data set. Now I just need a refresher on how to interpret various tests I'm running. I also led a day-long workshop for a regional library system on assessment. It really motivated to read the stacks of papers and books on assessment that I've been meaning to get to. Next post I'll share a reading list.
I've also been traveling, reading, teaching, serving on committees, working on another paper, and more teaching, sponsoring a librarian duckpin bowling night, and worrying about the presidential election (make sure you vote! The Maryland primary is at the end of April.). Blogging was not on that list. I'm trying to add it back in so it doesn't just become a summer thing.
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