Dominican University’s Crown Library is one of only five libraries nationwide selected to participate in the Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (RAILS) project during the 2010-2011 academic year. RAILS is based at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies and led by Assistant Professor Megan Oakleaf.
The three-year project seeks to measure information literacy skills of college students and is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. RAILS is designed to help librarians and academic faculty develop and test rubrics that evaluate student learning and information literacy. Oakleaf will travel to 10 different universities to meet with 10 librarians or faculty members at each school.
“Previously, librarians have been relying on tests to assess student work and skills and not looking at their research papers and projects,” Oakleaf said. “There are limitations on what you can test, and students aren’t always motivated to really work hard on a test that doesn’t impact their grade.”
“This is a timely project for the Crown Library to participate in,” says University Librarian Bella Karr Gerlich, PhD. “Our instruction librarians teach a robust average of 200 sessions per year, including an embedded information literacy component in all English 102 courses, required transfer student workshops and discipline specific instruction. We relish the opportunity to help with this important assessment study that will enable us to enhance Dominican University students’ learning experiences and further develop librarians’ teaching skills.”
Ning Zou, instruction coordinator, will represent Dominican during the first year of the grant. She was selected from librarians attending the ACRL Assessment Immersion Program, an intensive professional development experience focused on building librarian capacity to assess student learning. Zou has participated in extensive rubric training and will organize librarians and academic faculty on campus to assess student work samples.
“We also need to identify the characteristics that will make librarians and faculty members good evaluators of student work so that we can develop training for them,” Oakleaf said.
More than 100 samples of student work will be evaluated at each institution to not only evaluate the students themselves, but also how well librarians and faculty members assess student work. Part of the study’s overall goal is to normalize evaluation of student information literacy and establish rubrics to measure teaching effectiveness in libraries. RAILS will employ an interactive website (www.railsontrack.info) and Waypoint Outcomes, a provider of Web-based academic assessment tools, to process the anonymized assessment data.
The issue of library effectiveness is important, according to Oakleaf, because libraries need to be able to demonstrate evidence that their programs and resources are contributing to the teaching and learning missions of their overarching institutions.
“It’s a big issue with academic libraries to show that they are really contributing to the overall mission of the university,” Oakleaf said. “Libraries receive substantial financial resources from their institutions, so they have to prove their value within the university. This is a way to give actual evidence of the importance of academic libraries.”
Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering bachelor’s degrees through the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences and master’s degrees through the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Brennan School of Business, the School of Education, and the Graduate School of Social Work. The university also offers a doctoral degree in library and information science. In the 2011 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report ranked Dominican University in the top 20 of Midwest master’s level universities. The magazine also ranked Dominican as one of three Great Schools at a Great Price in Illinois.
