1. Create a lesson plan using backwards design
A simple backwards design approach is first developing actionable information literacy goals in mind that students can perform after the one-shot session. This makes laying out an assessment plan much easier such as introducing a lesson to students, explaining goals, showing the instructor your plan of action, and creating a rubric. Use verbs with actionable characteristics such as “cites”, “refers”, “searches”, “recognizes”, etc.
Don’t cram in a lot of goals into a one-shot especially if you only have a 45 minute to an hour session. You are integrating information literacy and not training new librarians. Asynchronous sessions can be challenging for students to watch due to "Zoom fatigue" so everything must be concise.
In your plan, list out the databases that the instructor wants you to cover with the students. This will help you lay out your tabs (if online asynchronous and producing a video) and give you a road map to cover.
2. Collaborate with the instructor
Disclaimer: some teaching faculty just want a one-shot lesson plan and nothing more. This is perfectly fine. But there are some faculty who love the library and want to engage more with resources, reference, and instruction. Offer these faculty members an assessment plan and ask them if they want to collaborate with you on a one-shot assessment plan. If so, ask to be a “Librarian” role in Canvas so you can be on-hand to answer questions for students and embed tests and videos.
For reluctant faculty, ask if they are truly satisfied with instruction and see if there is anything more you can do. Politely ask if students’ grades for the research component are up to their standards and offer that you can try a different approach to try to raise them. Lay out this plan and say that you can be a presence in the Canvas course if students need help. After completing this assessment plan with other faculty, gather any good feedback or quotes to send to reluctant faculty.
The faculty request form will eventually have a question asking if instructors if they want to opt into this assessment plan. See the Qualtrics form below under Technology Tools.
3. Pre-session
Pre-session is a video that is watched before the full asynchronous one-shot. It consists of 2 components: the pre-session survey and a short introductory video.
The pre-session survey is a Qualtrics test that will be given to students before any instruction takes place (both the introductory video and the full one-shot video). The Qualtrics form will have the following questions (not yet created):
The introductory video is a short (5-10 minute) video that will be embedded into the Canvas course. The video can be anything you want, but it should include items that are easy to explain, requires students to just consume information (passive learning rather than active), and save you time for the one-shot. Some examples could be:
The video should be watched by the students 1 or 2 weeks before your one-shot session. This is where it’s very important to be in an embedded Librarian role in the Canvas course. Otherwise, you will have to trust the instructor to do this in the correct order.
4. Asynchronous Session Video
These types of sessions need to be approached a little bit differently from synchronous one-shots. Unfortunately, you cannot ask students how they are doing while they are watching the video. What you can do is create discussion posts in Canvas as a Librarian role. First, fore warn the instructor that you want to create a required discussion post after watching the video. Post the discussion using bullet points so students know what to answer. Also, require students to reply at least to 1 other student's reply.
5. Post-session
The post-session consists of 3 parts: the post-session survey for students, embedded librarian, and post-session survey for faculty.
The survey for students should be given after they complete the discussion post. These will be the same surveys we traditionally give out to students. (See evaluation forms under tools.)
The embedded librarian part is being present on Canvas and answering any questions.
To follow up with faculty, a new evaluation form will be created for faculty to take. Only the Dean will see these results and will share with the instruction librarians using anonymous responses.
Criterion/Learning Outcome | Perfect | Good | Fair | Poor |
---|---|---|---|---|
Creating keywords from topic sentence | Student creates a comprehensive set of keywords from topic sentence including synonyms, antonyms, and abbreviations. | Student creates a set of keywords from topic sentence out of synonyms. | Student creates a small set of keywords from circled words of the topic sentence. | Student creates no keywords. |
Understanding scholarly/peer-review | Student can define the term scholarly and describe how to peer-review process works; differentiate between scholarly and popular resources. | Student can define the term scholarly and describe how to the peer-review process works. | Student can fairly define the term scholarly and fairly describe the peer-review process. | Student cannot describe the term scholarly and peer-review process. |
Use keywords to search through library databases | Student use multiple keywords in a library database and retrieve results that strongly support their claim/research topic. | Students use keywords in a library database and retrieve results that support their claim/research topic well. | Student use keywords in a library database and retrieve results. | Student cannot use keywords in a library database. |
Identify parts of a citation | Student can describe what a citation is and identify all of the parts of a citation including author, titles, publishers, years, etc. | Student can describe what a citation is and identify most of the parts. | Student can identify some of the parts of a citation. | Student cannot describe what a citation is and does not recognize any parts of a citation. |