In 2010-2011, Claudia Stanny, Director of the Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment and Britt McGowan of the Pace Library collaborated on a series of four workshops on the assessment of student learning outcomes in each of the four Academic Learning Compact and Academic Learning Plan domains (Communication, Critical Thinking, Integrity/Values, and Project Management). 

The Association of College and Research Libraries identified student learning outcomes and performance indicators related to information literacy.  Information literacy shares learning outcomes with each of the four ALC/ALP domains.  Some information literacy SLOs describe quality of written and oral communication. Others describe critical thinking skills required to evaluate sources and determine the relevance of evidence to an argument.  Information literacy outcomes also describe good authorship practices, which are relevant to the integrity/values domain.  Finally, the skills required to plan and implement a large scale project that requires location, retrieval, and use of library resources fall into the project management domain.

Each workshop included presentations by faculty, who described examples of assessment of learning outcomes in a domain and discussed assignments and teaching strategies that promote student learning in the domain.  Britt McGowan and other reference librarians described the contribution of information literacy skills to student performance in that domain, described how related information literacy outcomes might be assessed, and discussed how reference librarians could assist faculty with the development of appropriate assignments and described the kinds of library instruction and online library tutorials that faculty might assign to students to develop skill in these learning outcomes.

Updated 04/08/11