May 12, 2014 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Melody Allison (14), Susan Avery (ex officio), Merinda Hensley (ex officio), Kirstin Dougan (14), Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (ex officio) – Chair, Cindy Ingold (14), Jameatris Rimkus (15), Elizabeth Sheehan (15), Mark Wardecker (14), Sandra Wolf (14)

Members Absent: Mara Thacker (14)

Additional Attendees: Meredith Riddle (Information Literacy GA)

1. Welcome & Introductions

Lisa welcomed the committee and asked if there were any additions to the agenda. No formal additions were made.

Susan mentioned the upcoming interviews with candidates for the Instructional Services Specialist position. Committee members discussed how to coordinate their attendance to ensure consistent questions from the User Education Committee toward the candidates.

2. Acclamations & Accolades

Susan announced that she was awarded a four thousand dollar grant for a summer project at the recent provost retreat for faculty. The funding will enable an Undergraduate Library graduate assistant and an English as a Second Language teaching assistant to collaborate on creating learning objects for ESL students.

Merinda reported that her work on the new Framework is moving forward. The group met in Chicago to discuss audience, structure, and how to include the concept of metaliteracy. The structure of the document will be frames with six threshold concepts. The group also plans to revise the introduction heavily. Finally, the final document will be accompanied by a sandbox environment for professional development and discussion. Though not yet definite, an ACRL staff member may be hired to present the final document in person and moderate the sandbox environment.

Susan discussed how she personally struggled to see how the draft document would work for faculty and asked whether the planned revisions will be approachable for non-librarians. Merinda replied that although the document will be more accessible to a variety of users, the document will be targeted primarily toward librarians. The threshold concepts should come from subject experts, but the rest of the content should be within the discipline of library and information science. The working group will make a concerted effort to educate librarians about threshold concepts to make the document accessible. The document seeks to move librarians away from library instruction toward information literacy as a whole. The document will also seek to help librarians focus their teaching from a student-centered perspective. These goals are different from those of the old document, so the question of whether this document will replace the old standards remains.

3. Draft LibQUAL Results

Lisa began discussion of the document by providing an overview. Committee members received a draft excerpt of 2014 LibQual results. This excerpt addresses information literacy. LibQual included two questions developed by the User Education Committee; the results are listed on pages 39 and 40. The committee members took several minutes to review the results, asking themselves the following questions: What do we see? What do we think it means? What do we do about it? These questions pertain to the facts, interpretation, and subsequent action plan regarding survey results.

The committee members had a wide-ranging discussion about the results. They noted that undergraduates have very mixed opinions about making library instruction a requirement, but overall they find the instruction useful for their classes. Graduate students both favor a requirement for library instruction and find instruction helpful in classes. Faculty respondents agree even more strongly with obligatory library instruction and find instruction useful for classes as well. Overall, there is support on campus for offering library instruction sessions in classes and as a requirement, but results are skewed with undergraduates. Undergraduates do not seem to value library training as much, or at least do not want the training to be mandatory. Committee members commented that exploring the idea of required library skills training for all freshmen is very difficult at such a large university. Another committee member commented that when discussing the mindset of undergraduate students, it is perhaps astonishing that a sizeable proportion agreed that it should be required. These results could still be a surprising affirmation of the library when considering how frustrated students can be with prerequisites and administrative requirements.

Committee members wished they could see crosstabs by year in the students’ academic programs to see if upperclassmen respond more positively about library training than underclassmen. Committee members speculated that users might say that library instruction is more useful to them at the higher levels of their programs. Such results would require a discussion of which classes should we target for instruction.

The two factors of our library performance that were rated lowest were staying current and distinguishing between resources. These ratings prompt the following questions: are we doing these tasks as well as other institutions? Do our users value our working on these tasks?

Committee members discussed whether they found the data reliable. Committee members concluded that yes, the data is reliable enough, but that the data does not tell us everything we want to know. The response rate for the survey was 2.6%, which is considered good for web surveys. The representativeness is slightly skewed, with the College of Engineering underrepresented and the humanities overrepresented. This skew does not merely bring in fans of the library, as the humanities departments include users who are dissatisfied with library services.

The committee briefly discussed the radar charts (also called Antarctica charts) and how, in certain areas, the library is not meeting the faculty’s minimum expectations. One particular criticism leveled against the library was a perceived lack of individual study spaces, as opposed to collaborative meeting spaces. Faculty also indicated that we underperform on staff understanding of needs of users, willingness to address user questions, and addressing user service problems.

The committee looks forward to the full results, including the open-ended comments.

FYI – Upcoming 2013-2014 Meetings – 10:00-11:00 am

• June 9
• July 14
• August 11