Information Competence Assessment Task Force

Update on Progress

March 29, 2000

Progress on the Assessment

In February and early March SBRI conducted scenario trials with groups of students. The trials accomplished the following: 1) demonstrated that students could understand and respond to the scenarios; 2) enabled SBRI to chart similarities and differences in response categories from the scenario trials and the scenario workgroups; 3) enabled SBRI to craft "fall-back" statements for clarification during the interviews. Overall Richard Serpe and his colleagues felt that the trials were very successful.

Currently Richard Serpe and group are finalizing a draft of the questionnaire. When complete, I will send it on to you for comment. Sample databases are now coming from the campuses to SBRI. When I spoke with Richard today, he said that they hoped to start interviewing in the second week of April.

Further Clarification on the Scenarios/Assessment

The second question for each scenario is intended to get at how the interviewee would go about solving the information problem suggested by the scenario.

Scenario #1 / Information Competence #1 -- After further questions from members of the task force, Richard reports that this scenario will not get specifics from students on formulating a research question, but it will elicit building blocks that can be pursued during the planned follow-up activities over the next few years.

It is anticipated that during the 15-minute interviews, each student will respond to two scenarios. From these interviews, Richard expects that clear patterns will emerge to assist us in establishing baselines for information competence. It may be possible for the taskforce to review the descriptive results of the first 1000 interviews to begin mapping a standard of information competence. Richard notes that if things are obviously missing in the profile that emerges, they will become part of the planned follow-up to the initial assessment.

Planning for Follow-up: On March 10, 2000 a small group met at Cal Poly Pomona to review progress and plan for follow-up to the Spring 2000 assessment. (Present: Smith, Roth, Dunn, Sonntag, Serpe, Pulliam, Risley, and Curzon by phone). Richard outlined a follow-up plan that will satisfy the needs of our information competence project as well as the Measure of Success strategies required by the Legislative Analyst's Office. We are expecting the assessment follow-up proposal from SBRI within the next two weeks.

Task Force Role:

Even though Richard Serpe and his SBRI group are being paid to do the assessment, in reality we are just at the beginning of a longer process of assessment, analysis and remedies. SBRI will present us with various types of descriptive and statistical data to illuminate the results of the assessment, analysis, and remedies. Some challenges for us might include: mapping a standard of information competence from the data; recommending changes in instruction practice relative to deficiencies uncovered in the assessment; recommending effective methods of publicizing assessment results on campuses; and recommending effective ways to engage discipline faculty in applying remedies.