Assessing our Assessment: Failures and Successes at UT-Austin AJ Johnson, Michele Ostrow, Meghan Sitar Library Instruction Services University of Texas Libraries

FAILURE 1 Didn’t ask for help at the beginning

FAILURE 2 Didn’t recognize the difference between faculty and librarian culture mSnape.jpg

FAILURE 3 Didn’t anticipate low response rates

FAILURE 4 Didn’t consider how faculty view librarians

FAILURE 5 Didn’t hire an army of instruction librarians and statisticians "United States Army, The." Online Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 22 May

FAILURE 6 Didn’t pre-test

FAILURE 7 Still didn’t pre-test

FAILURE 8 Designed our post-test around faculty characteristics

FAILURE 9 Didn’t match pre-tests to post-tests

FAILURE 10 Project design didn’t reflect flexibility of our instruction programs

FAILURE 11 Didn’t define a control group “No controle (in control)” by renatotarga on Flickr,

FAILURE 12 Thought writing questions would be the easy part How would you... What three things would you... If you had to choose... Why does the... ARGH!

FAILURE 13 Didn’t base questions on learning outcomes

OLD: Question - You found an article in a database but it isn’t full-text. How do you find the full text of the article somewhere else? (Circle all that apply) 1.Search the Library Catalog. Use the article title as your search terms. 2.Search the Library Catalog. Use the title of the journal, magazine or newspaper as your search terms. 3.Follow the “FIND IT UT” link

FAILURE 13 Didn’t base questions on learning outcomes NEW: Learning Outcome - Students will be able to determine where scholarly material will be found. Question - You are doing research on border security along the U.S. Mexico border. Choose the BEST place to find a research study by a political science professor. Library article database Published encyclopedia Don’t know

FAILURE 14 Forced to use multiple choice tool to measure critical thinking skills

Old: When evaluating web sites to see if you should use them in your research, which factors should you consider? (Choose all that apply) 1.Site was on the first page of results in Google 2.Author expertise 3.Page design 4.Bias 5.Don’t know

FAILURE 14 Forced to use multiple choice tool to measure critical thinking skills Newer: You find a web page about media mergers and know nothing about the author. What would be your best clue as to whether the page was a reliable source to use for your paper? 1.date the page was last updated 2.the URL ( 3.the quality of the page’s graphic design 4.the advertisements on the page 5.don’t know

FAILURE 14 Forced to use multiple choice tool to measure critical thinking skills Newest: You are doing research on the effect of illegal immigration on border violence. You find a website from an organization called The Illegal Immigration Research Coalition, which includes statistics on incidents of border violence. List at least three criteria you would use to evaluate this site for bias and credibility.

FAILURE 15 Created questions with more than one right answer 1. Google searches will find information from library databases TrueFalseDon’t know 2. Choose the BEST place to find a recent report from a media watchdog organization library article database published encyclopedia don't know

FAILURE 16 Created trick questions You are doing Internet research about border security. Choose the domain of a website most likely to contain a U.S. presidential candidate's stance on immigration issues.org.edu.gov.com don't know

FAILURE 17 Didn’t define success before we started 27&ItemID=1061&action=refer

FAILURE 18 Didn’t identify all the variables

FAILURE 19 Can’t really use the data

Presentation and Questions Created by Participants available at: instruction/ostrow.html