Colorado Mesa University: Project Description

Primary Outcome Examined (select one or more)

(No) Student Learning: Assignment

(No) Student Learning: Course

(No) Student Learning: Major

(No) Student Learning: Degree

(No) Student Engagement

✓ Student Success

(No) Academic Intimacy/Rapport

(No) Enrollment

✓ Retention

✓ Completion

✓ Graduation

(No) Articulation

(No) Graduates' Career Success

(No) Testing (e.g., GRE, MCAT, LSAT, CAAP, CLA, MAPP)

(No) Other (please describe)

Primary Library Factor Examined (select one or more)

(No) Instruction

(No) Instruction: Games

(No) Instruction: One Shot

(No) Instruction: Course Embedded

(No) Instruction: Self-Paced Tutorials

✓ Reference

(No) Educational Role (other than reference or instruction)

(No) Space, Physical

(No) Discovery (library resources integrated in institutional web and other information portals)

(No) Discovery (library resource guides)

(No) Discovery (from preferred user starting points)

(No) Collections (quality, depth, diversity, format or currency)

✓ Personnel (number and quality)

(No) Other (please describe)

Student Population (select one or more)

✓ Undergraduate

✓ Graduate

(No) Incoming

(No) Graduating

(No) Pre-College/Developmental/Basic Skills

(No) Other (please describe)

Discipline (select one or more)

✓ Arts

✓ Humanities

✓ Social Sciences

✓ Natural Sciences (i.e., space, earth, life, chemistry or physics)

✓ Formal Sciences (i.e., computer science, logic, mathematics, statistics or systems science)

✓ Professions/Applied Sciences

✓ English Composition

✓ General Education

(No) Information Literacy Credit Course

(No) Other (please describe)

AiA Team Members (select one or more)

(No) Assessment Office

✓ Institutional Research

(No) Teaching Faculty

(No) Writing Center

(No) Information/Academic Technology

(No) Student Affairs

(No) Campus Administrator

✓ Library Administrator

✓ Other Librarian

(No) Other (please describe)

Methods and Tools (select one or more)

✓ Survey

✓ Interviews

(No) Focus Group(s)

(No) Observation

✓ Pre/Post Test

(No) Rubric

✓ Other (please describe)

a statistics form for Ask-a-Librarian service interactions (phone, chat, email, in-person at reference desk/other, consultationsm etc.; used LibAnalytics)

Direct Data Type (select one or more)

(No) Student Portfolio

(No) Research Paper/Project

(No) Class Assignment (other than research paper/project)

(No) Other (please describe)

- LibAnalytics form for Ask-a-Librarian interaction statistics keeping - Survey (of students who had research/assignment questions and for whom we'd gathered a student ID#)

Indirect Data Type (select one or more)

(No) Test Scores

(No) GPA

(No) Degree Completion Rate

✓ Retention Rate

(No) Other (please describe)

• How does the project align with your institution’s priorities and needs?
• Why did you choose the outcome and library factor as areas to examine?
• Why was the team composition appropriate?

1. In light of campus-wide commitments to student success and the
   assessment of student learning, CMU librarians set out to examine
   how our research assistance, an aspect of our roles within a teaching-focused
   institution, may impact student successes.

   CMU librarians have a strong commitment to the personal assistance
   we provide to our students, within and beyond classroom instruction.
   And there's not much in the scholarly literature regarding assessing
   the impact of research assistance from a professional librarian upon
   student success in higher education. Essentially we wanted to know:
   does our work matter?

   Our team involved a reference librarian, our distance services
   librarian, our then-head-public-services librarian (now library
   director), and a member from institutional research -- we needed a
   variety of perspectives on information literacy, student interactions,
   and data gathering and this composition met that need.

• What are the significant contributions of your project?
• What was learned about assessing the library’s impact on student learning and success?
• What was learned about creating or contributing to a culture of assessment on campus?
• What, if any, are the significant findings of your project?

1. Significant contributions of our project include: creating a culture of assessment within
   CMU’s librarians, particularly formal assessment strategies; establishing new and
   deeper bonds with important campus partners (Institutional Research, Library
   Advisory Committee, Distance Education); and our librarians' ability to contribute to
   the assessment and retention conversations on campus in a way that is interesting,
   valuable to the librarians, and maintains our commitment to being teaching-focused.
   And not only do we have the ability to contribute, we _should_ be contributing—and at
   CMU we definitely will be.

   Basically we have learned that students value our commitment to them and the services
   we provide to them—preliminary data is very promising and optional survey feedback
   bolsters our quantitative evidence. Significant findings, based on Fall 2014 data, include
   that students with any documented library visit had 90% success rates, a research/
   assignment visit = 91%, specific item needs = 92% (no documented visit= 83%).

• What will you change as a result of what you learned (– e.g., institutional activities, library functions or practices, personal/professional practice, other)?
• How does this project contribute to current, past, or future assessment activities on your campus?

1. As a result of what we learned, CMU librarians will continue our assessment effort,
   perhaps with a few tweaks, in perpetuity—which is a significant change both in
   terms of what we had gathered previously (more traditional desk tallies) and going
   from “for the project” to “this is how we’re doing things.” Additionally, we’d like
   to combine this effort with additional data gathered through check-outs, ILL and
   database usage—the more traditional library-and-student-success analyses—and
   possibly instructional session attendance, too, to get a fuller, more nuanced picture
   of our student success associations.

   In the past, the library had only “we think” and “we feel” anecdotal student success
   contributions—we could be qualitative about ourselves, reflectively, but had little
   data to support these statements. Now we have some and will continue growing that
   pool of data from our various services, so that we can analyze and contribute further
   to assessment activities.

Please list any articles published, presentations given, URL of project website, and team leader contact details.

1. Team leader contact details:
   Laureen Cantwell, Reference & Distance Services Librarian
   lcantwell@coloradomesa.edu, 970.248.1865
   Colorado Mesa University, 1100 North Avenue, Grand Junction, CO 81501

   Laureen will be presenting on their project concept and methodology at the Library
   2.015 Conference, October 2015. (This presentation will be delivered online to an
   international audience. The conference is free, virtual, archives all sessions, and
   serves an international audience.)

Do your ask-a-librarian interactions with students have associations with student success at your institution? Colorado Mesa University librarians decided to pose this question, devise and carry-out a plan for studying it, and become part of the student success and retention commitments at their teaching-focused institution. With assistance from their Office of Institutional Research, early data analysis shows a promising set of positive associations between CMU students’ success and interaction(s) with professional librarians via Ask-a-Librarian services.

Filename
ALA_2015_Poster_OFFICIAL.pdf	The Brave and the Bold: Students and Reference Librarians Unite to Assess Associations Between Student Success & Ask-a-Librarian Services