Instruction Committee Meeting- August 23, 2013

Conference Call

Members attending: Susan Avery (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign),  Kirstin Duffin (Eastern Illinois University), Laura Mondt (Richland Community College), Elizabeth Nicholson (North Central College), Aimee Walker (North Central College), Frances Whaley (Illinois Valley Community College)

Members absent: Molly Beestrum (Columbia College), Frances Brady (Adler School of Professional Psychology), Beth Mandrell (Rend Lake College)

CARLI Staff attending: Debbie Campbell, Lorna Engels

Guests: Jennifer Sharkey (Illinois State University), Meg Fraizer (Bradley University), Linda Naru (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Decisions:

• Minutes of the July 29, 2013 meeting were approved prior to the meeting.
• The Instruction Committee is interested in working with other CARLI Committees to develop an IACRL pre-conference program on the topic of assessment.
• The Instruction Committee will hold 2-3 webinars on assessment during the month of November.
• The Instruction Committee will focus on assessment for the CARLI Board white paper.
• The meeting was adjourned at 11:20am.

Announcements:

• VuFind enhancements were announced in an email earlier this week. Some of these enhancements have the potential to impact instruction.
• Instruction Committee will have a page on the CARLI website for handouts and notes from past forums. Debbie Campbell (CARLI) is working with the CARLI web team to facilitate this.

Tasks Assigned:

• Susan Avery will post to the CARLI blog about assessment on behalf of the Instruction Committee for the month of September.
• Lorna will follow up with Joliet Junior College as a possible location for the committee’s spring forum.
• Elizabeth Nicholson (NCC) and Susan Avery (UIUC) will create a call for proposals Google Doc for the upcoming assessment webinars for further development from the committee by Friday, September 13th.

Discussions:

• I-ACRL Pre-conference
  • There has been a request for CARLI committees to indicate their interest in planning an IACRL pre-conference on assessment.
  • October 20th is deadline for committee to submit proposal for the pre-conference to CARLI Program Planning Committee
  • Each interested committee would work together to plan a portion of a larger pre-conference.
  • The Instruction Committee is interested in finding out more about the possibility of the pre-conference.
  • Possible idea: How do different areas of the library play into the bigger picture of a full library assessment?
• Topics for CARLI Board Project
  • It would make sense to focus on assessment for this because of the committee’s focus on assessment this year.
  • Possible idea: White paper on trends and issues in assessment and how CARLI can support these.
• Assessment Webinar
  • The Instruction Committee is interested in working with interested parties from the Assessment Interest Group mailing list to develop a webinar on the topic of assessment. We will ask the meeting guests about ideas they may have for areas of assessment to cover and how that might transfer to a webinar format.
  • Discussion from members of the Assessment Interest Group mailing list:
    • Jennifer Sharkey (ISU): Interest in assessment is coming from administration. How does what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching play into the bigger picture of institutional recruiting and retention? How do we justify ourselves as a part of the curriculum and fight for our piece of “the pot?” People need ideas of what to assess, how to assess, and that the information they’re gathering is going to be useful.
    • Linda Naru (UIC): Interest in assessment as a result of a campus-wide initiative of student success and retention. Assess and demonstrate the library’s role in student retention and illustrate to administration how the library contributes to the bottom-line of the institution. Asking questions like: What is the long-term impact on the students? How is privacy impacted by assessment?
    • Meg Fraizer (Bradley): Library portion of campus-wide assessment is underway and wading through the pot of assessment techniques. Looking at United Way program assessment.
  • The Instruction Committee will put out a call for proposals for three separate webinars on how to assess, what to assess, and how to write successful assessments. Identify people we want to invite for “what to assess” because many librarians may not be comfortable leading that kind of discussion.
  • UIUC, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago have separate assessment teams that may be able to provide us with a pool of non-library guest speakers. We still need to determine who else has a team that does this?
  • We can ask for questions from participants ahead of time and give them to presenters to identify common problems or issues that come up and help presenters better tailor their presentations to the audience.

Meeting Dates and Deadlines:

• Next Meeting: Friday, September 27, 2013, Phone/video conference, 10:00am-11:30am