Curriculum: Standards & Assessment: Assessment

Sessions will be used in various ways to gather infomation about the knowlege base.

Sessions used as exit survey of student outcomes of understanding and performance.

The following assessment strategy examples are from

Information Power: Building Partnerships

for Learning

(AASL & AECT, 1998a) as written in the MSLA Media Program Standards for 21st Century Learning:

Checklists

Students are given a checklist at the beginning of a research activity with clear criteria for

learning expectations. This guide helps them pay attention to all the aspects of the research

process and product expectations. Students perform better when they clearly understand the

goals of the learning experience.

Rubrics

Rubrics are a scaled set of criteria clearly defining for student and teacher the range of

acceptable and unacceptable performances for the research project. Its purpose is to provide a

description of levels of performance. The language of the criteria must precisely define

actions in terms of what the student actually does to demonstrate skill or proficiency at that

level. Students have been shown to perform better when they have models and can compare

their performance to a standard (p. 177).

Conferencing

As students research, the classroom and library teachers inquire about progress by asking

questions specific to the students' task, so that specific feedback and guidance can be

provided to them. More formal conferencing can occur at the end of a teaching sequence

where students are asked questions that engage them in reflecting on their work, identifying

what went well, and determining what they would change given the opportunity (p. 178).

Journaling

This assessment tool is used to require students to focus on the process as well as the content

of their research. Brief journal entries, as research progresses, can give a sense of how

students are doing, provide information to improve instruction, and help students know

where to begin at their next research session.

Portfolios

In this cumulative process of assessment, samples of student work are collected over a period

of time to demonstrate the learning that has taken place. While the classroom teacher has

primary responsibility for portfolio assessment, the library teacher contributes to the

development of portfolio evaluation criteria, to the design of the assessment tasks, and to

helping the students in their critical analysis of their research and product. Library teachers

provide an important additional perspective on student learning that can encourage learners

to improve their performance (p. 180).

Assessment Tools

• Curriculum map showing integration of information literacy skills instruction

• Action research observing and in discussion with students during the information problem solving process

• Samples of classroom/library instructional collaborations/integrated lesson plans

• Exemplars of student work that demonstrate the level of mastery of specific information literacy skills

• District information literacy outcomes documents

• Rubrics

• Library schedule documentation of classroom use of library for inquiry-based learning

• Samples of library orientation materials

• School and district professional development offerings with attendance statistics