Re-tooling Information Instruction Delivery and Assessment for the Freshman Engineering Class: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Abstract

Engineering librarians at West Virginia University taught the majority of the freshman engineering students in both semesters of the 2011/12 academic year. Three in-class sessions were developed and delivered to over 800 students. Students were requested to complete online assessments to measure their information literacy knowledge pre-and post-instruction. The instructors were generally positive about the experience and were happy with the papers produced. One consistent complaint from instructors was they had to give up three class sessions. The librarians were concerned that more students did not take assessments connected with class sessions. During the course assessment and revision process for fall 2012, librarians worked with instructors to devise ways to deliver the same amount of information without using three class sessions. The librarians taught one session during week three, offered an out of class experience (OCE) in the library instruction room during weeks five, six, eight and nine (multiple sessions were offered to accommodate student schedules) and provided one online module on Intellectual Property to be completed in weeks ten to eleven. Paper or online pre-and postassessments were provided for each session to see what was known at the beginning and the end of each session. Students also completed a graded plagiarism tutorial and quiz. The assessment results have been much better. This paper will focus on the changes in the information sessions and delivery methods, provide assessment data for each area, and chronicle the steps taken to set up this successful collaborative effort with the engineering instructors.