Page History

February 19, 2014
January 15, 2014
December 4, 2013
November 6, 2013
October 2, 2013
September 4, 2013
August 15, 2013
July 9, 2013

Minutes for February 19, 2014 Meeting

Present: Nina Scholtz, Gaby Castro Gessner, Thomas Mills, Lance Heidig, Tony Cosgrave, Carissa Vogel, Kelee Pacion, Mary Ochs, Mickey Casad, Martha Walker, Amy Emerson (minutes)
Special Guests: Erin Eldermire & Megan Sitar

Programming:
Current and former PSEC-I Chairs spoke with ACRL regarding a possible re-Immersion in spring, but ultimately have decided it would be best to tap into our own resources here at Cornell: Assessment Expo - A full day event that will start with a keynote speaker from CTE or someone outside of Cornell, then feature librarian presentation sessions regarding assessment, then provide lunch, then more librarian presentations, and conclude with a workshop on assessment. Librarians from Ithaca College, TC3 & Columbia will be invited. It will take place in late May - hopefully Thursday, May 29. Goal: Avoid the R&O Unconference and Commencement. The workshop to be facilitated by the Assessment Subteam. All are welcome to help prepare for the event. This will be the major topic at the next PSEC-I meeting.

Special Guest:
Megan Sitar (Director of Research & Learning Services) - An informal conversation was held with Megan to bring her up to speed about what we're doing at Cornell with instruction. Nina described the team and subteam structure, including libraries, clusters, and liaisons. Nina also described the various programing PSEC-I hosts throughout the semester and explained that the goal is to further information literacy. Mary also explained that the Information Literacy Task Force recommended the new PSEC-I structure.
Megan in turn explained her former position at the University of Texas. Her unit was Library Instruction Services. UT underwent a curriculum change in 2010 - every UT student had to take one course in library instruction. Signature courses - some were small, some very large. There was no prescribed curriculum, just learning outcomes. Three learning outcomes for information literacy were: design search strategy, create citations, assess materials. There was a lot of faculty consultation. In many cases, she never saw the students, but created multiple assignments for them or created a research guide for them. She used the assistance of a graduate research assistant to meet classroom needs. Eventually moved to an assessment plan that involved pre- and post-test models to evaluate the courses - post-test was at the end of the year (for the signature course only). Also conducted rubric analysis of student work. New/second model: Eventually had to move to a "train the trainer" model - became embedded in pedagogy courses for graduate students. The assessment associated with this was rubric based because they were not in the classroom.
She provided support to subject specialists and their liaisons. This is becoming a more formal program.
Regarding information literacy outcomes: There was a commission of alumni who came together and proposed the course. After the president approved it, a dean was appointed and a new school was created to house the program. The Dean was a former philosophy professor who had had bad experiences with students citing to Wikipedia, etc. He built a signature course faculty toolkit to facilitate integration and to accomplish outcomes for each faculty member. How were outcomes measured at the end - what was the motivation for faculty to do it well? - A lot of attention was paid to course evaluations, assessment data, writing skills, etc. Because this was a centerpiece of the university, there was a lot of faculty buy-in. It spanned all colleges on campus.
A few campus units supported the course (ex. the Writing Center) - Provided assistance with how much to assign for reading, how to structure an assignment, etc. Some connections with the other units were already in place, but they had to create more.
UT hired an instruction and assessment librarian about two years ago and that allowed them to really look closely at their assessment data. Questions were focused on learning outcomes and faculty expectations.
Also began reaching out to high school librarians in the geographic area to address gaps.

Summary of Presentation by Gaby and Erin:
PSEC Instruction colleagues & guests-
Thank you for letting us share what we're doing to map our teaching efforts and for thinking further about the information we aim to provide.
What we aimed to convey to you this morning was the kind of information the report will contain:

• Overview of the university in numbers - colleges, courses, majors, etc., for context
• Your library unit's teaching efforts in the past three years (FY 2010 through 2013) that has corresponded to a course in a college (derived from Count it)
  Number of library instruction sessions broken down by year (2010-11; 2011-12; 2012-13)
  • Corresponding college courses your unit has taught for by course code, prefix/number (e.g., AEM 2100) and by level (1000, 2000, etc.)
• List of majors by college (e.g., Arts & Sciences, JGSM, ILR, etc.)
• List of core courses for each major by college/school broken down by level (to illustrate course sequences)
• Enrollment numbers for core courses by college/school (from low to high enrollment)
• Online file to the current courses by major that includes core, required electives and concentration courses

What we need from you:

• Please let us know is if there is something in your college/unit that is of particular importance or interest to you. For example, Lance mentioned that RLS is interested in courses offered by the Knight Institute (first year seminars), so we'll look at that more closely and spend less time in the more 'boutiquey' kinds of courses that are offered across A&S.
• If there is information that we intend to provide that you think is superfluous for your unit's purposes, please let us know!
• Any comments on how to make this clearer, would be welcome
• Lastly, what is the best way to distribute this information? Do we send out one huge report with the CU overview and every unit/college breakdown to CU-LIB? Do we create individual reports for individual library units?

We would appreciate your input no later than March 5th. And of course, if you have any questions, please let us know.
Many thanks for listening!
Gaby & Erin

Announcements:
Nina will reach out to the group by email regarding a matter involving Career Development Week.
Mickey is interested in talking with anyone who would like to about teaching preparation. Please contact her directly.

Minutes for January 15, 2014 Meeting

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