[image 1]On March 4, the Northwest Vista College Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) liaisons gathered for a pilot Information Literacy Assessment. Thirty QEP Liaisons have been identified from each academic and college area to help impact student learning through our Information Literacy QEP.
The goal of the NVC QEP is to equip students with Information Literacy skills that will show them how to Find, ethically Use, Synthesize, and Evaluate information in their classes and in their co-curricular programs.
QEP liaisons were asked in October of 2015 to lead a team from their discipline toward development of a discipline specific Information Literacy rubric. The rubric each discipline completes will be used to assess papers specific to each discipline on Assessment day in February of each year.
The development of a discipline specific rubric ensures that each discipline will engage in conversations about what Information Literacy means to their students and ask faculty to develop assignment guidelines listing the Information Literacy skills that help students determine what Finding, ethically Using, Synthesizing, and Evaluating information means.
[image 2]For the pilot assessment, the QEP liaisons applied their discipline specific rubrics to collected student artifacts and shared the rubrics with two other QEP Liaisons. After the assessment, the liaisons discussed the following:
a. Was the rubric easy to follow? If not, what areas could be clarified or simplified?
b. Were the directions for the assignments clear and worded so that students would understand Information Literacy concepts? (F– USE)
c. Were there areas that could not be measured? Is this an area your discipline does not wish to measure?
d. Were there areas that overlapped or covered too much ground?
In preparation for assessment day, the QEP Liaisons have attended several training sessions since October of 2015. QEP liaisons will remain members of the QEP Core Assessment Team for five years. Members will report results of the assessment to members of their discipline and adjust rubrics as necessary for the spring 2017 Assessment day.
Contributed by Denise Tolan, Northwest Vista QEP Director