2003-04 Mini Grant Recipient Christy Caldwell

Project Title

Use of a CPS to Assess Student Information Literacy Learning

Nature of the Request with Background and Rationale

CPS (Classroom Performance System) allows an instructor to quickly assess learning of the entire class, not just the students who volunteer responses. Each student has a remote. The instructor can ask a question. The students can enter their answer into the remote, and the results display on the instructor's computer. Library instruction has made efforts to move beyond a lecture format to an active learning environment to increase student learning and retention. We secured a donation from Dell computers of 17 wireless laptops for hands-on instruction. In-class assessments are used to gauge student learning. However, the learning can only be assessed for the few students who respond. The CPS system allows all students to answer a question, and the instructor to instantly see if the concept is understood and to what degree.

Impact on Teaching and Learning

In library instruction, we often only have one chance to meet with a class. It is therefore very important that we accurately assess student learning. We believe this system will further this goal by allowing responses from 100% of the students, and instant tabulation of the results will allow us to revisit concepts as needed.

Project Assessment and Plans for Continued Funding

We meet with about a dozen courses during Fall quarter. To assess the effectiveness of this product, we will survey the students immediately following the library session about how they felt about using this product, survey them to assess their learning after they have had time to use what they learned, and survey the instructor about the quality of the completed projects compared with past sessions of the course.

Although CPS is used throughout the country in K-12 and higher education, it has yet to be used on-campus. We have instruction sessions with a variety of different science disciplines and levels of students, and would be able to gather qualitative and quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of this product. In addition to the Follow-up Report, we expect the results of this grant to be of sufficient interest for a COT poster or presentation.