Assessing One-Shot Instruction: Using Post-Assignment Evaluations to Build Better Assignments

As instruction librarians, teaching is the focus of our job, and evaluations of our teaching effectiveness should contribute to discussions of our overall performance. Traditional course evaluations are used by faculty who spend full semesters with students, but how can we evaluate teaching effectiveness in one-shot sessions? Freshman English students at R-MC evaluate library instruction AFTER they turn in the annotated bibliography assignment the instruction targets. The evaluation, which was developed in part because the original assignment was unsuited to the library’s resources and tools, enables students to reflect on their completion of the assignment and to evaluate teaching effectiveness of the librarian instructor. This model of evaluation has myriad benefits. Among them, the instruction librarian appreciates seeing how students view her effectiveness, and student feedback about the assignment allow for a dialogue with the faculty that can lead to an improved assignment. This presentation will describe the process involved in this kind of evaluation and the impact it had on the design of the assignment and on the library instruction