October Conference 2017
Assess, Address, Success!
Dartmouth Library October Conference 2017
Friday, October 13, 2017
The ninetheenth October Conference for academic librarians,
sponsored by the Dartmouth College Library.
Location:
Occom Commons, Goldstein Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Hashtag:
#octconf17
Full Program
8:30 – 9:00
Check-in and Continental Breakfast
9:00 – 9:15
Greetings
9:15 – 10:15
Keynote: Debra Gilchrist, Building A Learning System One Assessment at a Time
Debra Gilchrist, Ph. D. is Vice President for Learning and Student Success at Pierce College, a 20,000 student community college in Washington State. Debra serves as chief academic and student services officer in a college highly focused on meeting mission and improving student success outcomes. Prior to this role, she was Dean of Libraries and Institutional Effectiveness at Pierce, and an instruction librarian at Pacific Lutheran University and South Dakota State University. She has co-facilitated several ACRL initiatives and programs such as Immersion, Assessment in Action, and the workshops to implement the Standards for Libraries in Higher Education.
10:15 – 10:30
Coffee and break
10:30 – 10:55
Lightning talks
Quick Change: Using Immediate Student Feedback to Enhance Research Instruction
Hilary Kraus, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Assessment doesn’t have to be time-consuming or cumbersome to be valuable. This lightning talk focuses on the feasibility and desirability of gathering brief and specific student feedback prior to and at the end of library instruction sessions. In a collaborative effort, a librarian and a faculty member used this data to identify knowledge gaps and make nimble adjustments to content and teaching style in the midst of the semester.
Tell Us What You Really Really Want: More Soap
Katherine Morley & Debra Berlanstein, Tufts University
“If you could have three wishes granted for the library, what would they be?” With just a survey box and online form to gather responses, we asked our patrons this open-ended question in early 2016 and found that what we could infer from some responses was just as useful as more specific wishes.
Clear! Revitalizing Digital Communications
Allison Herrera, Harvard Medical School
Discover the process of a communications overhaul through one library's experiences. Although every organization has a unique user base we can all learn from one another in the field. I'll showcase how I've assessed external communication needs, difficulties faced along the way, and successes. Learn how to implement new ideas for your organization's user base assessment and what kind of challenges to be aware of on the way to success.
Enhancing Active Learning: Assessment of Poll Everywhere in the Classroom
Sarah Clark, University of Manitoba
Through word clouds and multiple-choice questions, Poll Everywhere was used to assess students’ familiarity with finding and evaluating literature in a 2000-level information literacy session. This presentation will discuss the evaluation of this experience from the perspectives of librarian, course instructor, and students, and help participants understand how this assessment tool could be useful within their own teaching environments.
10:55 – 11:20
One LITS: Building the first coordinated customer service program at Mount Holyoke College's Library, Information and Technology Services
Chrissa Lindahl & Erin Stalberg, Mount Holyoke College
A committee of service point managers at Mount Holyoke College's merged library and technology organization has spent the last year building a customer service initiative from scratch in order to provide our users with consistent excellent service, no matter which of our 8 service points they encounter. We will discuss our process and share the the customer service principles and a training and implementation plan we developed, and report on how the first month of the new initiative has gone.
11:20 - 11:45
For Your Information: Assessing the First-Year Info Lit Transition
Maura Keating & Allison Papini, Bryant University
Bryant University uses a First-Year Information Literacy Assessment (FYILA) to gauge first-year students’ prior knowledge, abilities, and attitudes about information literacy in order to improve teaching on campus. Since 2015, Bryant librarians and faculty have used the data to gain a deeper understanding of students’ current knowledge of information literacy and research strategies. Join us as we discuss how the results allowed us to target weak areas and develop a focused approach for improving information literacy education for all students, while opening a conversation about the meaning of teaching and learning on campus. We are eager to expand this collaborative effort by sharing our survey instrument with session attendees, and we hope you will adapt this assessment tool for use at your own institutions.
11:45 - 12:10
Saving Space: Collecting Building-Usage Data to Advocate for Student Space in the Library
Jacalyn Kremer & Curtis Ferree, Fairfield University
The good news is University administrators have slated the Library for a large building redesign project to create a learning commons within the Library. The challenge is how to accommodate the additional personnel who will be housed in the Library without compromising students’ space needs. Our presentation will provide an overview the multi-modal building-use assessment project undertaken by the Library’s Assessment Team to determine current space use patterns, what aspects of Library space are important to students, and what changes they would like to see in the building.
12:15 – 1:30
Lunch/tours
1:30 – 1:50
MailChimp or Mail Chump?
Zoe Weinstein, Brandeis University
MailChimp or Mail Chump? How do we reach pre-major freshmen, and once we reach them, how do we know they're listening? An investigation of MailChimp's open rate, connection with appointments, and click rate.
1:50 - 2:15
Assessment in Parallax: Research Education, User Engagement and Change at Trinity College
Erin Valentino, Rob Walsh, Joelle Thomas & Jeff Liszka, Trinity College
Our story is a case study of how librarians at Trinity College have been redesigning the Research Education Program based on needs we identified at Trinity College and in the midst of great institutional change. It is a story about how ambiguity, uncertainty, and disorientation can mark success as much as clarity, certainty, and organization do. Student and faculty focus groups, a space study, and an analysis of First-Year syllabi are snapshots in and of institutional flux. Seen together, these snapshots show different dimensions of success, moving in time with larger institutional and pedagogical processes.
2:15 – 2:40
Lightning talks
Using the Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IF-AT) to Assess Student Learning Outcomes
Eugenia Liu, University of New Hampshire
Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IF-AT) forms are interactive, scratch-off, multiple choice forms that librarians can use to provide immediate assessment of student learning and immediate feedback for students to aid them in processing their learning. These forms are easy to use, are fun and engaging, and may be flexibly modified to fit into one-shot sessions as well as credit-bearing courses to address a variety of class needs including individual study, tests, quizzes, and team-based learning.
Using an Advisory Board as a Student-Driven Assessment Tool
Cori Wilhelm, SUNY Canton College of Technology
As part of its student-centered mission, SUNY Canton’s Southworth Library Learning Commons created the SLLC Advisory Board: a constructive student focus group who – through regular meetings with SLLC’s directors – provides valuable feedback used to influence decision-making. These organic meetings, although guided by pointed questions, often result in unexpected and candid conversations leading to meaningful results. Learn how the group was created and how it functions, lessons learned in the process, and suggestions for other libraries interested in creating a similar group.
Don't Reinvent the Wheel: One Community College's Approach to Creating a Rubric
Carrie Salazar, Middlesex Community College
Sometimes getting started is the absolutely hardest and most intimidating first step, especially with assessment! Come hear about the Middlesex Community College librarians' collaborative process in creating their ACRL Frameworks rubric. This lightning round will discuss how the MCC librarians created a rubric: our goals and outcomes, how we approach a huge task by not burning ourselves out, and how we anticipate using the rubric for both outreach and an assessment tool. Walk away feeling more empowered and equipped with a list of resources used by MCC and an outline of one method in starting your assessment rubric.
When Outreach Met Instruction: A Cross-Team Focus Group Success Story
Samantha Walsh & Robin O’Hanlon, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
In Spring 2017, Librarians at Levy Library, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai conducted a focus group with Masters of Public Health students, a unique population within the institution. This lighting talk will describe focus group planning and execution, as well as results and actions taken as a result of this focus group. The challenges and benefits of involving input from multiple library teams in planning will also be addressed. Attendees will leave with an understanding of best practices in focus group development.
2:40 – 3:00
Graduate Student Feedback for Library Renovation: Moving forward to assess and meet student needs in redesign
Mandy L. Havert with and on behalf of Jessica N. Kayongo & Jonathan D. Schwarz, University of Notre Dame
The iconic Hesburgh Library building was nearing its 50th anniversary when review of the facilities program began in advance of renovation planning. This talk centers on graduate student workspaces, in particular closed study carrels that were characterized as 'mop closets' by some occupants. In 2013, review of existing data and feedback informed the initial planning for renovation of one tower floor in the library and its graduate student spaces. Through a series of focus groups, open forums, surveys and social events, feedback was collected and shared with the renovation team. Iterative designs over a period of two years were influenced by feedback, and post-renovation surveys of occupants signal positive outcomes of the process with room for revisions in future floors to be renovated at a later time.
3:00 - 3:25
Proactively Improve Library Experience by focusing on Hospitality, Micro Skills and Micro Affections
Tom Paige, Dave Mac Court & Isabel Espinal, University of Massachusetts Amherst
In this talk, we will examine the differences between customer service and its related concept hospitality. We will then introduce two ways to improve the patrons experience; microskills and microaffections. Microskills is multi-tiered training method used by counselor and social work programs to teach students to put clients at ease, and develop a more empathetic relationship to the client. Micro affections can be practiced as one antidote to micro agressions, a way to proactively respond to our user communities who are barraged daily with microgressions.