In class last week we talked a lot about assessment. How do librarians assess? We talked about many informal methods, including reading the room, working with patrons one-on-one while they work (through reference interviews and walking the room through sessions and giving immediate feedback). This form of assessment is mostly formative, there isn't a point where librarians give summative feedback.
As a classroom teacher, I could see that formative feedback was more useful for students, but summative feedback really serves the teacher. I was taught to treat "final exams" as assessment of MY teaching as much as their learning. So where can librarians go for that same feedback?
In class we talked about the development of surveys to assess learning and instruction, and it does seem that this is a librarian's best tool. Of course, just like with any assessment, the results are only so good as the survey itself. We need to be thoughtful of WHAT we are assessing for surveys to be effective at all. Reading the room is a good sense in the moment of where people are, but as we discussed this takes highly developed social skills and awareness, and can't always be accurate.
On another note, I really enjoyed the Jane McGonigal Ted Talk. There's some food for thought!
This is a good point! We can offer feedback surveys to ask students their opinion of a workshop, but just because someone liked it does that mean they really learned anything from it, or are taking away what you want them to be taking away? For something like information literacy, it seems like the only way you could know would be to see the work they complete afterwards. Maybe this is yet another reason that collaboration with faculty is important.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good point, too. One of the toughest things about instruction in a library setting is that in a lot of cases you don't get to actually see your students' final work and thus use it to evaluate what skills they gained. Collaboration with faculty definitely is something that can help with this, but as we've noted before, that requires getting to the point where librarians and faculty speak the same language about what students are doing and learning.
DeleteBring your fork ... we'll have time to talk some more about the food-for-thought of McGonigal tomorrow.
ReplyDeletei'm glad that we were able to find some classtime to talk about McGonigal and her ideas surrounding games and education
ReplyDelete