Procedures for Educative Assessment

1. Forward-Looking Assessment Formulate one or two ideas for forward-looking assessment. Identify a situation in which students are likely to use what they have learned, and try to replicate that situation with a question, problem, or issue.

After demonstrate how to search, identify, and choose a scholarly journal article, students could practice on other databases that assigned by the librarian to find one article that meets the assignment request based on the demonstration.  In addition, the librarian design a survey that asking students to fill it out before the course and after the course to see if there were differences.

2. Criteria & Standards Select one of your main learning goals, and identify at least two criteria that would distinguish exceptional achievement from poor performance. Then write two or three levels of standards for each of these criteria.

One of the session's goal is that each student is able to find one scholarly journal article.  Students understand different types of articles: scholarly/peer-reviewed journals articles, journal/magazine articles, newspaper, etc.  Second, they are able to use scholarly databases or identify the journal's type by checking through Ulrich's Periodicals Directory while using combined databases which contain both scholarly journals and trade magazines. 

It is exceptional achievement if students could find scholarly journal articles from more than two engineering databases and poor performance if students could not use library databases to search at all.

3. Self-Assessment What opportunities can you create for students to engage in self-assessment of their performance?

Students will be requested to practice on other databases assigned by me after my demonstration to self-assess their performance.  And it is the opportunity to them to be familiar with other databases, ask questions, and share their thoughts and searching tips with the whole class.

After the lecture, the library has "how to start your research" webpage.

4. "FIDeLity" Feedback What procedures can you develop that will allow you to give students feedback that is:

Frequent Immediate

Discriminating, i.e., based on clear criteria and standards Lovingly delivered

Can provide feedback immediately during the session.  And frequent feedback once students use our reference services or contact me directly.

Designing a course: teaching methods and content

Learning Goals for courses:

 

Every student is able to find scholarly journal articles from library databases and write in the APA style citation.

 

Ways of Assessing This Kind of Learning:

 

Students able to identify scholarly journal articles, use research strategies, and write in APA style.

 

Actual Teaching-Learning Activities:

 

Step 1 - Lecture:  Explain what are scholarly journal articles, demonstrate how to choose databases and research strategies, and APA format.

 

Step 2 - Activities:

- assigned databases to groups to practice research strategies and find one scholarly journal articles

- share searching steps of the database with the whole class, how to determine if the article is a scholarly one, and citation in APA format

 

Helpful Resources: (e.g. people, things)

 

1. Ulrich's Periodical Directory will help students to determine if the journal is a scholarly/referred or not.

 

2. Refworks that students use to generate citation in APA style or other styles they choose.

Situational factors and Significant learning goals

Situational Factors:
I am teaching Information Literacy to upper division and graduate level research/writing courses.  The course's goal is teaching students to do an academic research with library's resources based on the research assignment.  Each course has approximately 25 students and meets two hours per semester in the library computer lab.  The session is designed active-learning teaching model which means students will practice while I am demonstrating and we will discuss searching strategies and different databases.

The learning objects are placed by the college liaison librarian(s) that my two engineering colleagues and I decide that students will be able to identify peer-reviewed/scholarly journals, understand Boolean logic, citations, and research management tool from us.

Graduate students have more research knowledge and skills than upper division students, which I give more time to practice and discuss but I will demonstrate and explain more to upper division students.

I am enjoy learning new things and eager to know about students.  At the end of each session, students are requested to fill out an open survey so that I could know students knowledge levels and understand if the session designed the way that students could learn easily and if learning objects meet students information needs, and if the content is too much or not enough too them.  And follow up library consultants are available to students.



Significant learning goals:
I want students to understand the different of the academic resources and public resources through the session; be critical to identify scholarly journals.  I hope students enrich research strategies and Boolean logic to search effectively, remember the library has multiple databases that they could find scholarly journal articles with accurate information.   From the course, students could see the research assignment as a whole picture and able to use variety of keywords and subjects to search and refine results.  In addition, students could able to use research management tool to organize their search results efficiently.  The session could help students to be "good" students with research skills to meet their academic and professional goals in the future.