Discussion transcripts: August 2002

Dear all,

Here is a response for the discussion from Brad Jones which was originally forwarded by Des Stewart...

From: Brad Jones, bjones@scu.edu.au
Subject: Re: Fwd: Response from Ralph Catts: Assessment debate

Thanks for these items by Lupton and Catts.

One of the things on my 'to do' list, esp after Meg O'Reilly's recent 'interactive learning online' course (I have just received her draft paper, if you are interested) was to look more seriously at assessment aspects of IL. I've always felt, as you know, that our role is a teaching role, in accord with the 'guide on the side'/user driven/info consultant educational philosophies. Most librarians I know consider themselves as 'teachers' of a sort. All this was fine until I started teaching a few TAFE units where I had to get serious about giving marks to students, and wearing their positive and negative comments on tasks, their assessments and final marks.

It often required some serious self reflection on my own teaching and some hard decisions! I suspect, as a relatively 'quiet' lot, if required to put our money where our mouth is, many in our profession would feel awkward about 'marking' students on something that has not traditionally been done. If IL is integrated into curricula, which I feel is imperative, then there are major issues such as:

how to convince the hierarchy that this should be so;

how do we convince the teaching staff?
...it seems to require a team effort as far as I can see, and many teachers are wary of industrial threats. For example, in Meg's course I suggested that in an ideal IL situation there could be a change in computer security levels to enable librarians to 'roam' through units and e-course bulletin boards and the like, to introduce themselves and put in a few suggestions where appropriate, and links on unit course modules direct to the subject librarian, rather than being accessible only through the library homepage (an e-strategy based on old admin/geog boundaries). A couple of the participants were very keen on increased collaboration, but the whole library/teacher turf issue warrants serious research and consideration as it is where the significant implementation obstacles lie.

how to convince the student body likewise;

how to convince our profession: how many are prepared to wear the antagonism that comes with us giving 'bad' marks, and is potential "failure" at IL an issue we will have to confront?

what right do we have to assess when many/ most of our profession have no professional teaching quals and have no educational credibility for assessing others. There are some pretty average library 'educators' around, who get overcome by anything more than a basic tour/cat demo, and many of the students are more IT literate than a lot of old-school library people. Should it be something that requires a qual upgrade, such as Dip Ed or Cert 4 in Workplace assessment and training (or at least a module or two)? (For example, some time ago I applied as a trainer for a local employment/training agency in IT type areas, and despite my quals: incl DipEd: and extensive practical work history, I couldn't get a look in without a Cert 4!). Or, as 'teaching' tends to be shared and not the regular business (usually semester startstuff) in libraries, would such quals be overkill, do we need some new 'competency' qual, and should we be looking at specialisation?

Then there are softer options such as sitting on the side of the courses and leaving assessment up to the teachers, but is that going to do the job adequately?

Another aspect that seems to me to be relevant is the timing of education. I suspect that we don't happily sit with a single module approach, but need integration over entire courses, and tailored for these. E.g. over a 3-year degree, start with catalogue/easy full-text retrieval d/bases/basic net, later move into more difficult d/bases and research level retrieval, serious net evaluation and assignment based assistance, and ultimately an working knowledge of what is available in the public domain when students enter the 'real' world, and an appreciation of what is 'invisible/deep web' behind firewall stuff, and a possible role for 'info consultants'.

An interesting debate...

Brad

Dear all,

Here is a further response from Brad Jones. I also forgot to say in the last one that these responses are forwarded with his permission!

Enjoy!

From: Brad Jones >bjones@scu.edu.au< Subject: Re: Fwd: Response from Ralph Catts: Assessment debate Further to my earlier note (forgot to add this), Catts makes the point about IL people getting better results. I haven't looked a the literature (another 'to do'), but I feel there is a danger in this. While at TAFE I regularly had the uneasy feeling as I perused lists of the higher acknowledged students that they were not regular library users. Maybe they bought their resources? Maybe they were the original thinkers (who did not require lots of stimulus material) that markers rewarded: and the library does not teach original thinking? While there are possibly elements of truth in both of these, maybe (I have a nagging doubt) the library role may be less about excellence for high achievers, and more about raising the performance of the otherwise lesser achievers or even managing to keep in the game those who would otherwise have dropped out. After all, competence in IL is not a good criteria for eliminating people who would be excellent teachers, nurses, psychologists etc, and it is one of the dangers in including it in assessments. Brad

Hi all,

I'm finding it a bit hard to get into this year's discussion. I feel like I am the silent majority who have been there done that. Who run the standard one hit wonder user education, with luck, having alignment with a current assignment. I don't assess nor evaluate nor mark the student's work ( although I have been involved with this in the past, to a certain degree), but see the 'fruits' of my labour in seeing the little darlings working away on the computers in the library after the session. Some appearing competent and getting what they're meant to be getting, and some struggling.

Although it makes your heart sink it can often be rewarding when you go to assist them and although they recall seeing all you did in class...now they want to know how to do it. It is here in working one to one with a 'tuned in' little darling that you can actually channel some of that pent up (and frustrated) information literacy teaching.

I dream of getting information literacy embedded in the curricula and just keep on plugging away...often with my head against a padded brick wall... :-)

Graeme Oke

As a secondary teacher-librarian I have to say also: been there, tried that and I have the lump on my forehead to prove it!

In schools, the advent of SACSAF has brought with it exhortations that we explicitly teach, (and therefore assess?) the essential learnings and key competencies. While information literacy is not labelled as such, it can be identified in the essential learnings, especially problem solving/thinking and communication (literacy/ICT skills). It has to be said that a lot of teachers are cynical and confused in getting their heads around it all in terms of key ideas and outcomes let alone essential learnings!

However I have 'hitched my wagon' to the SACSAF by pushing the line, 'why reinvent the wheel?' If teachers set assignments with decent questions, that require students to solve problems rather than find and regurgitate info, most will find they are already implementing SACSAF.

I believe that while TLs can assist in designing such tasks and showing teachers such neat things as assessment rubrics, and help in monitoring student efforts, it is primarily the teacher's responsibility to assess the skills of their students: after all they know them better than we do, or should! Our role is to make sure infolit skills are taught and included in the assessment criteria.

I realise many of you do not work in schools, but the basic principles of who-teaches/assesses-what bears comparison. For those who are interested I am presenting a workshop on the ILPO (Information Literacy Planning Overview) programme up at Quorn (amongst other things), tomorrow. You are welcome to take a peek at it on my rblonline website.

Sue Spence
Teacher-librarian
Adelaide High School
South Australia

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