Presenters: Casey Long, Christopher Bishop.
Presented at the Georgia Libraries Conference in Columbus, GA on 10/04/2018.
Librarians strive to teach students how to find quality sources but are there more serious issues to address? In this session we present a rubric designed to evaluate senior seminar papers. The instrument measures quality, documentation, and integration of sources listed in the bibliography.
3. Bibliography
Belanger, J., Zou, N., Mills, J. R., Holmes, C., & Oakleaf, M. (2015). Project RAILS: Lessons Learned about Rubric Assessment of Information Literacy
Skills. Portal : Libraries and the Academy; Baltimore, 15(4), 623–644. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pla.2015.0050
Choinski, E., Mark, A. E., & Murphey, M. (2003). Assessment with Rubrics: An Efficient and Objective Means of Assessing Student Outcomes in an
Information Resources Class. Portal : Libraries and the Academy; Baltimore, 3(4), 563–575. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pla.2003.0078
Fagerheim, B. A., & Shrode, F. G. (2009). Information Literacy Rubrics Within the Disciplines. Communications in Information Literacy; Tulsa, 3(2),
158–170.
Gola, C. H., Ke, I., Creelman, K. M., & Vaillancourt, S. P. (2014). DEVELOPING AN INFORMATION LITERACY ASSESSMENT RUBRIC: A case study of
collaboration, process, and outcomes. Communications in Information Literacy; Tulsa, 8(1), 131–144.
http://dx.doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2014.8.1.157
Stevens, D. D., Stevens, D. D., & Levi, A. (2013). Introduction to rubrics: An assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback, and
promote student learning. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus.
Jastram, I., Leebaw, D., & Tompkins, H. (2014). Situating Information Literacy Within the Curriculum: Using a Rubric to Shape a Program. Portal :
Libraries and the Academy; Baltimore, 14(2), 165–186. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pla.2014.0011
Lowe, M. S., Booth, C., Stone, S., & Tagge, N. (2015). Impacting Information Literacy Learning in First-Year Seminars: A Rubric-Based Evaluation.
Editor's Notes
Introduce presentation topic
Today we will talk about a rubric we designed to assess student skill levels in senior seminar capstone classes.
Explain how it has given us a greater understanding within an organization regarding student skills.
Positioned us to have more in-depth discussions with faculty regarding improving student skills.
Before moving into how we used the rubric and our findings, we would like to talk about the development process.
Development
Literature review to locate the use of rubrics in library instruction
Slides
Show rubric site
Screenshot
Show bibliography
Many rubrics available with various measurements. We already had an idea of the elements we wanted to address but looked at how other rubrics measured similar skills.
Crafted new rubric using out initial ideas and insights garnered from the rebrics we evaluated.
Present Rubric
Describe
What does it measure
Utilize authoritative works within the discipline to fulfill research needs
Citing sources in a bibliography using consistent formatting
Citing sources in the text of the paper using in-text citations or footnotes in a consistent format
Attributing sources within the text of the paper (Note: this was removed from the scoring sheet due to inconsistencies in interpretation)
Integrating sources into the paper
Why did we choose these five categories
Care most about quality of sources and how much they were taking our advice
How well were they leveraging sources to enhance their own authority
How well were they using the heart of the work
How well were they paraphrasing and quoting their sources
Validating our rubric
Evaluated a sample set of papers using rubric to ensure agreement on application
Discussed disagreements and inconsistencies
How we applied it
Gathered 60 papers from senior seminars across different disciplines including two senior seminars where we were heavily embedded.
Evaluated 66 percent.
3 point scale for each section
Weak, acceptable, proficient
Dropped “not acceptable”
Most important aspect of our rubric and method is choosing three citations and investigating those to see how the student used them in their paper.
Method
Tried to choose citations used more than once
Chose ones that were accessible through our resources
Brisk ILL department
Locate cited sections using parenthetical citations or footnotes
Sometimes problematic due to incorrect/missing pages and/or author/in-text citation disagreement
Findings
We were surprised by the results.
What we thought was a problem was not a problem.
Use of authoritative works
Most cited works were high quality
We gained insight into other more pressing issues
Problems with citation
Missing page numbers in in-text citations/footnotes
Inconsistent formatting
Evaluation of source integration disclosed
Instances of plagiarism
Problems with incorrect paraphrasing and/or quoting
Use of sections of a work that were not important to the author’s argument (i.e. filler)
A lack of depth in student use of source material
Heavy reliance on quotes and frequently only reference sources once in a paper.
Areas where the author’s ideas were taken out of context and misquoted or misrepresented
Differences and similarities across disciplines
Scoring consistent across disciplines, reinforcing areas of success and concern
In particular we were interested to know whether the papers that received mentoring had a higher quality of resources than in other senor seminars.
Slightly better quality of resource selection and documentation for classes that received mentoring
Students in all disciplines struggle with integrating sources into the paper.
Conclusions and follow-up
Use the scoring sheet developed for the analysis of papers to provide constructive, formal feedback on at least one draft of a paper submitted by student participating in library research mentor programs.
For departments represented in the study, share results and discuss how this might change library research instruction efforts.
Encourage faculty to designate a preferred citation style and upload resources created by the library to Moodle to support the preferred style.
Analyze student papers in ENG 110 and upper-level courses within the major to identify when students become better at selecting quality sources.
How we work with the senior seminar classes
Each year there are roughly x senior seminars, we work with Y of them and in 2 senior seminars we have a very formal mentor program.
Class visit versus mentoring
Did a survey - Survey results showed that participants in the mentor program found it very helpful, but students in other classes were resistant to being required to meet with a library mentor.