The latest on the SAILS Assessment

The scheduled assessment sessions have finished for the semester. We currently have a total of 197 students who have taken the assessment. We may have a few additional survey-takers if any of the SRC folks have some time after their SRC to take the assessment. Can we push for an even 200?

Of the 197 students, we have 20 students (10.2%) who have taken one of the library instruction "intensive" courses. We also have 16 (8.1%) students who have done one SRC and 15 (7.6%) who have participated in more than one. If you sign up for an account at the Project SAILS website I can give you complete access to the demographic data.

The assessment test period runs through the end of May. Because SAILS compares students against other students in other institutions, we will not receive results of the test until this summer. Once we do, we will be able to see how our students compare against other students, and how our different groups compare to one another.

I spoke with someone at the ACRL conference who had received their data report. One of the interesting results is the clarity with which you can see which questions (concepts) your students completed with ease and which gave them difficulty.

So what's next?

At the end of last semester, the librarians looked at the data compiled from the INTD 105 assessment. After some discussion, it was decided to discontinue the survey-tool assessment of library instruction.

At some point, someone suggested that the INTD 105 students take the SAILS assessment at the end of this semester instead of the usual survey-tool assessment. Forgive me, I can't remember if this idea was discussed in a meeting somewhere. Marylou also suggested asking all the INTD 105 classes to take the extended version of the survey that Dan Repinski's INTD 105 class took last semester (questions 14 to 23).

The INTD 105 classes have been asked to come in for assessment at the end of the semester - they are already starting to request classrooms and proctors.

We can administer this assessment separately from the initial assessment - this way we won't weight our results too much toward the freshman.

If we decide to administer the SAILS, we need to think about what two additional questions we want to ask the students. Do we ask the same questions as the initial survey? Different questions?

Please think about some of these items and questions - we will talk about them at the assessment meeting next Thursday (4/19/07, 11:30am, Location TBD).