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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 Meghan 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 Meghan Sitar (Director of Research & Learning Services) - An informal conversation was held with Megan Meghan 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 Meghan 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.

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