Quality standards audio

This transcript discusses the quality standards and policies for Angela State University's Online Library Instructions. It highlights the American Library Association Standards for Libraries in Higher Education and the Association of College and Research Libraries framework as key industry standards. It also mentions the ASU policy for institutional effectiveness, the distance education policy, and the accessibility and electronic information communication and technology resources policy. The transcript emphasizes the importance of aligning with ASU's mission and ensuring accessibility for students. It also addresses challenges such as assessing the impact of instruction, incorporating new materials, and maintaining data privacy and security. Hello, and welcome to the Quality Standards for Angela State University's Online Library Instructions. I'm Emily Krauss, and I'm going to be walking through all of the various policies and industry standards that shape the accountability and quality standards for library instruction. The first main one is a professional library association called the American Library Association Standards for Libraries in Higher Education. So this is specifically for universities and colleges. It outlines the industry standards for academic libraries, including the standards for employee evaluation, as well as assessments of library resources such as library instruction materials. There are quite a few pertinent standards within the structure. Not only do we need to ensure that our instruction sessions align with the principles of librarianship and the ethics, but we also are looking towards an outcome-based method. So improving our outcomes, and that is what the chart, the model is included. There are standards to identify and select performance indicators that are congruent with our institution's mission and contribute to the institutional effectiveness. So not only are we focusing on libraries as a whole, but how we connect as a library to our institution, as well as developing user-centered measurable outcomes to help our programs such as the library instruction. The next standard is the Association of College and Research Libraries framework. It is the framework to which all modern-day library instruction is formulated around. It indicates the necessary information that should be covered in information literacy program. This framework ensures information literacy programs are effectively teaching information literacy to the students. So there are six main principles, main frames. Authority is constructed and contextual, information creation as a process, information has value, research as an inquiry, scholarship as a conversation, and searching as a strategic exploration. There was a major shift back in the early 2010s from just regular competencies laid out by the ACRL to this framework to be a little bit more qualitative and address the flexibility of student learning and the student research process. So students can get a better understanding of research and just the conversation that's included with scholarly publications and their own work that they perform in their courses. Next is the ASU policy for institutional effectiveness. This addresses ASU standards for researching, planning, and implementing support programs for quality effectiveness and it ensures the materials are in line with the institution's mission. Even though information literacy is a separate educational standard outside of the regular courses that students take, it still needs to align with ASU's institutional goals and vision, as well as their framework, which is informed by state standards. The next one is the distance education policy for Angelo State University. This adds on to the institutional effectiveness to determine the structure for development, implementation, and maintenance for any online courses in general, but for our purposes, the information literacy courses. A key part of this policy that sticks out to me is the focus of on innovative and engaging courses that are equivalent to what is offered in person. That is a major restriction that we have to work within to make sure that our in-person instruction and in our online course instruction are giving the students exactly the same information and serving them equally across the board. The next policy that is pertinent to creating quality programs is the accessibility and electronic information communication and technology resources. This ASU policy ensures online materials are meeting ASU standards and remain ADA compliant. These standards are necessary for the online information literacy course, so the course can be accessible to students. These accessibility standards follow closely with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG. There are a few ASU specific standards to ensure uniformity, but there are also additional considerations that aren't included in the ASU policy that are a part of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines that ensure online content is accessible to as many students as possible. These are the main five within this context, but there are other factors that affect accountability, quality, and the success of ASU's online instruction services. These include the existing information literacy materials and internal procedures. There are a few either vaguely documented or undocumented internal procedures because the person in the previous position was there for so long. There are existing methods of creating, evaluating, and tracking information literacy courses. There are existing course scaffolding that has been developed by other librarians, which shapes the materials that get used when and for what courses. Then of course, the supervisors have expectations for the materials and delivery. They do act as another form of assessment on this program success. We always need to consider student needs. Outside of the policies and procedures, we do have to consider not all skills are needed in every course right away. Sometimes faculty and librarians have to prioritize which framework to focus on. Student expectations and learning styles do shape the course as well as the assessment, which is why we're trying to move towards more engaging materials while still considering the need for grades. Student research habits have informed the shift from information literacy competencies to the ACRL framework. That major influence of our program was a shift born from the fluidity and the flexibility that we needed to address the different types of student research habits. Then lastly, faculty expectations. There are certain activities and needs that the faculty request or demand such as the inclusion of certain outline methods. Existing faculty expectations do shape and inform the development of any new information literacy courses. Then as I mentioned before, the quizzes and quiz grades are a need for faculty and for course tracking. Whatever program we decide to move forward, we do need those forms of assessments to consider to work into our course. There are a few challenges within these restrictions and guidelines. For one, data limitations to see if student research skills have truly been impacted by the instruction. Not only are we only limited to our quiz grades, but unless we decide to do a intensive longitudinal student success research project to determine if our materials are effective in imparting these research skills, we're not entirely sure that even if they pass the quizzes, even if they engage in the material, that they are retaining the helpful research skills. Then there also is the new online materials to boost engagement. They require new accountability systems or changes to the old ones, because we do want to work in new software that requires new procedures on how to gather data, track data, and then also disseminate that data to faculty or to other librarians or administration to justify the continued use of that new software or to justify finding a new software. Lastly, there is a higher risk when using new resources to ensure the privacy and security of student data, as well as the effectiveness of these new resources. As I stated before with the data limitations, it is hard to illustrate to administration the impact of these information literacy courses. There is a little bit of a challenge to justify money allocation to any new software implementation and human development to use this new software. There are a couple of factors to keep in mind with any changes to the programming.