Reflection of February 7, 2011 Class

Last week's class was, yet again, engaging, energetic AND useful to my knowledge as a future librarian.  The way that the session was broken up into different types of assessment really helped me think broadly about the term and connect it in ways that I will use in my profession. 

Watching Jane McGonigal's Ted Talk was valuable for several reasons.  First, I learned a lot about gaming and the potential's it can have for students and our world.  While I am not a gamer, I hope to work with young people in some capacity as a professional, so knowing that gaming is more than gaming will be very useful as I consider connections and activities for youth.  Secondly, it was a great way to show a type of assessment that we will be doing very often in the library world - at conferences and in our own spaces - surveys/evaluations.  The examples and discussion of evaluations was great because I got to see examples of what to do and what not to do when creating one.  At the UM library, learners must evaluate sessions after every class they take, and when I begin to do instruction, this lesson will help me form an evaluation that meets the needs of my assessment.  PLUS, it was really pretty awesome to see the survey results from Jane's Ted Talk.  People were all over the place in their answers and it just gives a sense that, while we are in a graduate program, people all still have opinions and different lessons learned.

Next, the discussion of question classification and the accompanying activity was interesting.  It really reminded me of 501 affinity walls (which wasn't fun) but doing the walk-around was fun (can't remember the term used in class to describe it but "walking the wall" wasn't it...).  It was interesting to see how different people thought about different questions, and our further discussion on question formats was very useful, as I said earlier, for thinking about evaluation. 

Overall, it was great to see different types of summative assessment because I'm always caught up thinking about standardized tests when, in fact, there are many other ways to assess a final product.

Finally, our discussion of formative assessment in the context of libraries was really useful.  I have been working on the reference desk for a semester now, and definitely feel like I'm giving formative assessment each and every time that I do a reference transaction.  This idea, though, is interesting because in the reference class I'm taking now, we've had a few librarians speak, and our discussions keep turning to giving our patrons "good enough" articles for their inquires.  It mostly comes out of not making people feel like they have to sit and get a lesson at the ref desk when in fact all they want is an answer to their question (I think mainly to encourage them to keep coming back...)  That's a mini-rant. 

The real discussion of formative assessment in library instruction helped me think about ways to do this when I start teaching.  Another way that I've seen this done at the library is through having a "floater."  The floater is generally a student who is familiar with what's being taught and walks around making sure the learners are caught up with the lesson.  It seems pretty effective especially when people are in a workshop that fits their skills.

Overall, I appreciated this lesson on assessment because it helped me think outside the box of what I generally think when I hear that word. 

Also, our discussion on space was VALUABLE!  we actually talked about that in my reference class too.  Hope we get back to it at some point :)