Outcomes and Assessments

As Emily was talking about outcomes and assessments yesterday, my mind went to an article I recently read in "College & Research Libraries News" in the January 2008 issue. The article was about a librarian who embedded herself in a Communication course. The professor was the one who came up with the idea. She found that by being in class she was able to address Information Literacy skills as they came up and the results were great. The article is titled,
The "embedded"librarian in a freshman speech class and it is on page 28.

I am not saying that we should imbed ourselves in a course. This took a lot of time and some of it was time she gave but I am thinking that it would be to our benefit to work closely with those who are teaching. For instance in a Success Strategies class (in house) I team teach with another staff member. When she gets to the part on brainstorming she lets me know it is time to come in. This process takes us two weeks. The first week I go in and along with her help we introduce the resources available in the library for students to use. She gives the students an assignment and we tell them to start searching for resources for next week. The next week we meet in a computer lab and we give students time to search for resources. Both of us walk around and help those that need it and question those who think that don't need help. The last 30 minutes I show them how to use Noodlebib. I make sure that all can log in and have them all add one. The assignment then is for the students to create a resource list of 1 website, a book and 3 journals.

By having me go into the classroom, I am able to get to know the students and I have found that students are more comfortable with me and I usually end up with at least 3 to 5 of them coming in for more help. Then I can work on key words with them or walk them through putting more resources in Noodle Bib.

I really enjoy working in the classroom with the teacher and I try to get a chance whenever I can. Sometimes the classroom is the library!

Just recently I had a 300 class in here. The four of them did not know how to access the library resources or use Noodlebib. We did it in two nights and the teacher was following along on his own computer and asked questions.

Yes, I think outcomes and assessments are important to us as librarians and I would like to be apart of this group! With outcomes we will get farther with Information literacy.