FYI Literacy

Currently, everything I read is grant related. Well, almost everything… I just bought a Barnes & Noble Nook (e-reader) and I've begun re-reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is really taking me back to the 1980's. Some things never go out of style, such as this sage advice for intergalactic hitchhikers: don't panic. I'd have to say it has served me well, even in my current work assignment as Title V project director. Not to panic; that would be a "best practice." I also used to read quite a bit of philosophy in my undergraduate days. Epictetus (AD 55-135) has always been one of favorites, for his practicality, his notions on power and control, and also acceptance. This quote from him is particularly compelling: "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." In these terms, our colleagues, Kelly Lambert and Robin Cotter, have wrung additional value from their ongoing project developing information literacy modules; specifically in the manner in which they have responded to the challenges of assessing student learning outcomes.

Not to panic; that would be a "best practice."

As part of the interdisciplinary "Biology Bootcamp" series, the information literacy component aims to assist students in developing study skills that will enable them to successfully complete their course. In fact many of the Bioscience courses have substantive information literacy elements: BIO108 (research and presentation), BIO181 (report on infectious diseases), BIO182 (paper on evolution, including website evaluation; research on water quality and citing research), and BIO205 (researching and preparing a brochure on a genetic disorder). As a result, the information literacy tutorials have broad utility among most sections of bioscience classes. Furthermore, they can be adapted for other science and non-science courses. If you know of or are part of another academic department that would like to learn how this Title V-funded resource can be adapted to more specifically meet the needs of your students, please let me know. 

In the first phase of this project, undertaken and completed in fall 2010 with additional and significant contributions from Breanna Prinzhorn (bioscience faculty), content was created for the first three modules, including videos, transcripts and quizzes. Pre- and post-assessments were also created, tested and revised. Options for entering pre- and post-tests into Lesson Builder and Blackboard were also explored, but more about that shortly. Below is an embedded video from the tutorial (one of my favorites) and below that is a web link to the project as it appeared at the end of phase one. On behalf of her team, Kelly presented on phase one of the project to the full Title V Steering Council in November 2010 and received high praise.

http://www.pc.maricopa.edu/ctlt/titleV/Science/InformationLiteracy/index.html

Revised modules (phase two) can be viewed at Robin's BIO205 website, "MicroMania" (select from modules 1-8 in the column to the right).

Now about that assessment data… it turns out that one of the elements of this project -- a minor detail, really -- turned out to be quite a chore and continues to pose a challenge to implementation. One of the project tasks was to explore options for testing students and then harvesting that data to not only assess learning outcomes for the instructors but to also feed that information back to the students themselves. Due to interface issues between Soft Chalk (Lesson Builder) and the now-older version of Blackboard (Phoenix College is not using the latest version), pre- and post-test data cannot be easily uploaded, disambiguated, or otherwise used to take advantage of Blackboard features such as active release. Other options may allow more flexibility but then student authentication, controls on cheating, "time on task" authentication, and autoscoring must be sacrificed. To date, this component of the project has been constructed in Google docs, Survey Monkey, Lesson Builder, and Blackboard. Each solution provides an important piece but none of them offer a perfect solution. Kelly and Robin have navigated this challenge with aplomb. Their response to this challenge, and ongoing work with Jan Binder, has not only revealed a limitation in the assessment of resources such as these but is also moving us closer to potential solutions that will allow us to not only say that our work has made a positive impact on student learning outcomes; it will allow us to demonstrate it. Until then, don't panic.

By the way, for those of you who are looking for a little reading material, the pre- and post- test surveys can be viewed via the following URLs:

• Pre https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N56TDHZ 
• Post https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F8KJQ6G