Title: Library Instruction Assessment of First Year Undergraduates at a Small College Library
1Library Instruction Assessment of First Year
Undergraduates at a Small College Library
- Patricia M. Duck
- Evan Cornell
- University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
- September 28, 2004
2Who We Are
- Small regional campus library
- Part of the University of Pittsburgh Library
System - About 1900 undergraduate students
- 70 commuter, 30 resident
- 20 majors
3Why we did an outcomes assessment study
- Previous history of assessment
- Campus evaluation efforts
- Response to a new environment
- How (or if) library users change as a result of
their contact with the library and its
instructional program
4How we did it
- Picked a study group Freshman Seminar
- 181 captive students
- Developed pre and posttest based on the Daniel
Library at The Citadel (see Hernons An Action
Plan for Outcomes Assessment) - Involved psych dept., seminar faculty and senior
capstone students
5Pretest and Posttest 12 questions
- Action questions
- find a book in the library
- find a journal article in the digital library
- Instructional questions
- did you receive instruction how many times?
- Opinion questions
- do you agree?
6Sample Pretest Form
7Two instructional sessions
- Overview of the library
- Introduction to local reference books and LC
system - How to search Pittcat (library catalog)
- Discussion of the right vocabulary
- Comparison of results searching databases in the
Digital Library vs Internet - Evaluation of internet resources
8Pittcat Screen sgambling
9Pitt Digital Library Screen
10Crunching the numbers
- Manual tabulation
- Access database
- Report delivered to psych students
- Data input and run through SPSS
- Only 71 (out of 181) were usable
11Question 1 Find a book
12Question 2 Find an article
13Questions 3-9 Results in Percentages
14Question 10 Everything is on the Web
15Question 11 Examine credentials
16Question 12 Document information
17Statistical Results for Question 1 2
18 Problems Encountered
- Explaining the pretest and posttest
- Completing the pretest and posttest
- Plagiarism
- Coding of surveys
- Lack of time for focus groups
19The Next Step
- Re-do the survey with specific instructions
- Revise coding
- Have focus groups
- Library Experiences at UPG
20Thank you for your attention! Dr. Pat
Duck Millstein Library University of Pittsburgh
at Greensburg 1150 Mt Pleasant Rd. Greensburg PA
15601 724- 836- 9689 pmd1_at_pitt.edu