Personal Preferences in Assessment of Learning

A lot of planning is involved when it comes to developing and carrying out information literacy instruction. First, a Needs Assessment must be performed to determine what kinds of instruction will be most beneficial to students. One must develop instructional goals, teaching objectives, and expected learning outcomes. And, finally, one must deliver the instruction to the intended audience. However, what good is all of this planning if you have no method established for measuring whether or not your students have actually learned what they were supposed to? This week's blog focuses on the importance of assessment as well as the different approaches one can take in the assessment process.

Assessment essentially accomplishes two goals; it acts as a way for instructors to measure how well a student has learned the material presented in an instruction session and it allows instructors to see where adjustments and improvements can be made in order to produce better learning outcomes (Grassian & Kaplowitz, 2009, 199). Megan Oakleaf, assistant professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, lists several approaches to information literacy assessment. While each method has its benefits, there are also limitations. Oakleaf lists the pros and cons to three major assessment methods - fixed-choice tests, performance assessments, and rubrics (Oakleaf, 2008).

Fixed choice tests are the most familiar to both students and instructors and include multiple choice, true/false, and matching. While these tests are cheap to produce and easy to score (hello scantron!), they are not very good at accurately measuring success in learning (Oakleaf, 2008). Sure, students may be able to select a familiar answer from a list of four choices and perhaps they can guess between true or false. But have the concepts taught to them during the instruction session actually stuck? There is no way to know this by evaluating the answers of a fixed-choice test!

A more reliable method (and the one that I prefer) is the performance assessment. A performance assessment measures how well a student has made sense of the material and how they apply it in the real world. To quote Oakleaf's article, "performance assessments give students opportunities to demonstrate their understanding and to thoughtfully apply knowledge, skills, and habits of mind in a variety of contexts as they would in the real world" (Oakleaf, 2008). Students can demonstrate their grasp of concepts through papers, projects, problem-based exercises, or portfolios (Grassian & Kaplowitz, 2009, 211). However effective these types of tests are at measuring learning outcomes, they are costly to develop, administer, and score. They require time for the student to prepare and for the instructor to analyze (Oakleaf, 2008). Librarians must consider if these limitations outweigh the benefits of acquiring a more accurate assessment.

Finally, there is the rubric. For me, I see rubrics as being closely linked to the performance assessment. Rubrics "measure the learner's results, responses, or products against some criteria or standard of performance" (Grassian & Kaplowitz, 2009, 213-14). Rubrics allow for reliable and consistent scoring of student's work as well as stating instructional expectations clearly for the student's benefit. With rubrics in place, students know what they are expected to have learned following instruction and this empowers them to meet those standards (Oakleaf, 2008). But, like the previous two methods, there are certain limitations. Librarians need to be mindful of how they word the rubric. If expectations are too generalized, the rubric becomes ineffective. Instead, librarians need to specifically state expected learning outcomes in a language free from jargon so that students are sure to understand what is expected of them (Oakleaf, 2008).

Due to the fact that I am relatively inexperienced when it comes to teaching, I need to ensure that I dedicate time during my planning process to examine methods of assessment more thoroughly. There is no such thing as a "perfect teacher". Only through assessment will I know whether or not my students have truly grasped the concepts I have presented to them as well as which parts of my instruction where indeed effective.

Bibliography

 

Grassian, E. S., & Kaplowitz, J. R. (2009). Information Literacy Instruction: Theory and Practice (2nd ed.). New York, New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. .

Oakleaf, M. (2008, July). Dangers and Opportunities: A Conceptual Map of Information Literacy Assessment Approaches. Libraries and the Academy, 8(3), pp. 233-253.