Information Access Course Assessment Mentoring Session

1. Information Access Course Assessment Mentoring Session Loren Rhodes, IA faculty of record

2. Presentation Plan • Brief history and structure of the Information Access course • Current objectives and content • Course assessments used • Pre- and post- attitude/skills assessment survey questions • Preliminary results • Assessment mentoring, your feedback [NOTE: the opportunity to discuss the IA course objectives and content will occur in another learning community!]

3. IA History • Previous curriculum (1990s) a college-wide requirement:Intro to Computers (3 cr.) • Early implementation of current curriculum ca. 1999 • IA integrated into CWS and Extended Orientation (5 cr.)part of CWS grade • Included basic library research • IA competencies to be utilized in CWS (Ideally) • Ca. 2003 IA became its own 1 credit course

4. IA Course organization • 33 sections fall semester, 2 in spring semester • 2-3 sections in fall designated for international students • 16 students maximum per section • Students expected to use own laptops • Currently in computer labs • Staffing • One “faculty of record” • 1 administrative student assistant year-round (full time summer) • ~15 student assistants for the fall semester

5. IA Calendar • Summer orientation (email acct, Moodle access, registration) • Option to work on Microsoft office competencies during summer • Fall semester all sections sync’d on a Monday-Sunday week • Students can work ahead, but expected to make additional progress each week • Attendance required until all competencies completed • Finish by early November

6. IA Goals • To verify and/or ensure that students have base line technology and library skills to function as a student academically at Juniata. • Specifically, students are able to connect to the network, print, understand ethical use of technology and the internet, and use the Office suite and [Google Docs] for email, word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. • Library skills include understanding the library facilities, electronic searching and proper use of citations. • Not a goal: IA has also become a favorite venue for conducting surveys of the first year students over the years.

7. IA Competencies • PC Basics, Eaglenet connectivity and Security • Netiquette and Eaglenet policies • Microsoft Outlook 2010 (+Mac version) • Microsoft Word 2010 (+Mac version) • Microsoft Excel 2010 (+Mac version) • Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 (+Mac version) • Windows Movie Maker (or iMovie) • Windows Publisher 2010 • Google Docs • Understanding information literacy and using the Beeghly Library • Juniata College Resources Sustainability review and survey. • Other surveys, assessments

8. IA Library Module • Cannot start in summer • 4 mini-modules each with a quiz • Must read through materials before quiz; 3 attempts possible • This work done before library visit • 5th week all sections visit library • Library project consists of electronic searching for • Beeghly monographs, • On-line/printed journal articles • Internet resources • Turn in an annotated bibliography with proper citations. • ~20% for the quizzes and citation document.

9. IA Competency Word example • Text on title page is Vertically and Horizontallycentered • Student's name and ID are on titlepage • Body font size is 10-pt. and Calibrifont is used • Line spacing is set to double-space • JC Eagle imageplaced to left of first paragraph and is properly labeled • Excel chart is pasted in text box to right of second paragraph • Organization chart is placed as a drawing to right of Drawing Section. • Left, Right, Top, Bottom margins are all set to 0.5" This is the Narrow Setting • Pagenumbers in bottomrightcorner of every page except title page

10. IA Competency Word example • Headers include name,ID#, and date on every page but title page • Synonym for ‘convert’ (first sentence of columns section) • Footnote added after first sentence of columns section Footnote reads: "Bard, Information Access Guide …." • 3 columns X 4 rows table is inserted • First column has Names • Second column has Titles • Third column has PhoneExtensions • Tableborderthickness is set to 1 1/2 pt. thick • Columnssection is displayed as two columns [All in a 3 page document]

11. IA Competency Excel example [Calculates semester GPAs] • Student's Name and ID are in cells B1 and D1 respectively • Grade Equivalence column filled according to table. • cell F4 has formula =C4*E4 • cells F5:F9 have formulas =C5*E5, … , =C9*F9 • cell C10 has formula =SUM(C4:C9) • cell F10 has formula =SUM(F4:F9) • cell F12 has formula =F10/C10 • course titles are left justified in cells • column titles are centered in cells • all numbers have 2 decimal places

12. IA Competency Excel example • bar graph from corners D15:H24 (represents grade equivalences.) • Fall worksheet is copied to a second sheet and labeled as Spring • Course data is entered according to assignment • A31 has words "Overall GPA" • cell B31 has formula =(F9+Fall!F10)/(C9+Fall!C10) • cell A32 has conditional if-statement =IF(F11 >= 3.6, "Dean's List", "Not Dean's List") • Question #1: Answer is 3.10 Question #2: Answer is No. It does it for you. Question #3: Answer is 3.17

13. IA Materials • Moodle used as Course Management System • Moodle available at Summer Orientation and continues through the summer • Posting of competencies available through Moodle or email to ia@juniata.edu • IA Guide and syllabus • Library content are mostly loaded into Moodle • Reading • Video

14. IA Guide • About 200 pages for both Windows 7 and Mac OS • Revised yearly • All necessary material to do the competencies are in the guide • Available as e-book since 2011. $10. Most buy, many never opened! • Aversion to reading either format. • Ebook hard to display content AND apply it on same screen • Guide preparation late spring

15. IA Assessment: content choice • Driven by a number of factors • Current technologies used as standard at Juniata • Need for full connectivity to resources (shares, printers) • What students bring on their laptops (latest version) • What is generally used in the classroom • “I won’t be using Excel” (You know this as a freshman that in 5 years…?) • Colleague suggestions • Assessment needs (e.g. Google Docs, recently) • Assistants interviews • and discussions at staff meetings

16. IA Pre- and Post- AssessmentSurvey Fall 2011 data collected as a first iteration (technical glitches prior) • Demographic data (summer and pre-) • Technology ownership data (summer and pre-) • Attitudinal and self rating (pre-/post-) • Skills (pre-/post-) • Pre-assessment conducted during first two weeks of fall classes. (33 questions) • Post-assessment conducted after all competencies are completed. (30 questions)

17. Dataset challenges • Moodle export into Excel for charts, but… • 350 rows of data • 90 columns • Some students not do post- survey, some not pre- survey • Limited to overall statistics • Need to put into database for complex retrievals and comparisons of pre- and post- responses per student

18. IA Self-rating Technologies • Word • Excel • PowerPoint • Publisher • Outlook • Web Browsing • Movie Maker “How familiar are you with Microsoft Word?” Ratings • 1 : Expert • 2 : Very Competent • 3 : Competent • 4 : Some Competence • 5 : Minimal Use/Familiarity • 6 : No Familiarity

19. High self-ratings

20. Medium self-ratings

21. Low self-ratings

22. Combined self-rating

23. Word Skills Assessment • You need to force the text that follows the cursor to start on a new printed page. This is best accomplished by: • Pressing the Control-Enter (or Control-Return) key combination • Pressing enough Enter (or Return) keystrokes so that the text falls on the next page • Clicking on the Page Layout tab and changing the margins • Changing the spacing of the paragraph to have extra lines precede it • Clicking on the Insert tab and choose Header

24. Word Skills Assessment 40% to 53%

25. Excel Skills Assessment • If cell B4 contains 20, cell C4 contains 5, and cell D4 contains =B4+C4*2, what is displayed in D4? • "=B4+C4*2" • "20+5*2" • 30 • 50 • #ERROR

26. Excel Skills Assessment • If cell B4 contains 20, cell C4 contains 5, and cell D4 contains =B4+C4*2, what is displayed in D4? • "=B4+C4*2" • "20+5*2" • 30 • 50 • #ERROR • If cell D4 contains =B4 + $C$4 * 2, and you copy and paste the contents from D4 to D5, what formula is then in D5? • =B4 + $C$4 * 2 • =B5 + $C$4 * 2 • =B4 + $C$5 * 2 • =B5 + $C$5 * 2 • =B5 + $D$5 * 2

27. Excel Skills Assessment 46% to 62% No significant change

28. Network Share Self-rating How comfortable are you with connecting to network drives (share/folders) and printers?

29. Miscellaneous Attitudinal Questions I feel confident using personal computers.

30. Miscellaneous Attitudinal Questions I get anxious about having to learn a new application (such as Excel or Movie Maker)

31. IA Additional Thoughts • Initial pass for assessment questions • Some questions expected to have little improvement • Pre- assessment is conducted, for some, after they have worked on the competencies in the summer (<20%) • Many skills may be honed in other courses than IA; IA can’t take all the credit…or the blame.

32. IA Q&A and Feedback • Thanks to Jerry Kruse and Kirk Baumgarten for some of the data crunching and graphics