Monthly Archives: December 2010

Conference Presentation Feedback, Part 8: Getting All Meta

(See this post for an introduction to this blog series.) Well, this is the final post in the series, and I thought I would wrap up with one last thought, which is to point out that this entire series has been enabled by the minute paper assessments that I got back at the end of […]

Conference Presentation Feedback, Part 7: But will it get me tenure?

(See this post for an introduction to this blog series.) One question that got asked over and over again was essentially, “how can I use this information in my annual performance review and/or my tenure portfolio?”  And that’s an excellent question!  It’s common practice for teaching faculty members to include course evaluations as part of […]

Conference Presentation Feedback, Part 6: Self-reporting vs. “actual” assessment

(See this post for an introduction to this blog series.) I got several comments on my presentation that were roughly analogous to this one, which I am quoting exactly (the emphasis is in the original): So, to me, they’re still evals of what students think they’re learning, not whether or not they’re actually learning. So, […]

Conference Presentation Feedback, Part 5: Print journals?

(See this post for an introduction to this blog series.) So the first example I used in my presentation was a collection of excerpts from minute papers that eventually convinced me that a large portion of our students, given a journal article citation, don’t know how to find it in a collection of bound print […]

Conference Presentation Feedback, Part 4: Scalability and Sustainability

(See this post for an introduction to this blog series.) As the sole instruction librarian at my library (among a staff of seven), scalability and sustainability are really important to me.  So when I saw comments to the effect of: well, it’s lovely that you’re able to do this at your itty bitty liberal arts […]

Conference Presentation Feedback, Part 3: “But we need numbers!”

(See this post for an introduction to this blog series.) The second most-common idea I found in the minute paper responses can be summed up in the following quotation: We are going through accreditation, and the committee wants more than anecdotal – how do you assess to get the “numbers”? I also got asked virtually […]

Conference Presentation Feedback, Part 2: Getting Buy-In

(See this post for an introduction to this blog series.) The single most common response I got on my conference presentation minute papers can be accurately represented by this quote: How on earth to institute this kind of reflective practice among other librarians!! First off, this is a problem of leadership and organizational culture. Assessment, […]