ADDIE Week 5: Evaluation

This is the last post in a series. If you did not read the other posts in the series, start here.

The E in ADDIE stands for Evaluation, which I will also use interchangeably with assessment in this post.

I have an admission to make. I may be the ideas queen, but I am not yet the assessment queen. The fact of the matter is, traditional methods of assessment is tough in the library setting. In a one-shot class, they are not your students. The librarian does not give out grades; in fact, we only see them for 50 minutes once, maybe twice. If you embed a three-minute library tutorial at the point of need, why would a student take the time to give feedback unless they had very strong feelings about it? That being said, there are many steps in the ADDIE process where you can do assessment of yourself. Perhaps the best place to start is to describe a couple of kinds of assessment.

Formative assessment allows students and their instructors to check in and monitor their understanding. An example of a formative assessment would be a research proposal, a PollEverywhere survey, or a quick verbal check of understanding of main points during a class. This allows the instructor to come back and reteach the topic another way, if necessary.

Courtesy of Hey Girl blog

Summative assessment allows an instructor to see how much a student learned. The most common example of a summative assessment is a midterm or final exam.

Formative assessment is the type of assessment that I feel best fits library instruction. As I mentioned before, we are not the ones giving the grades (thankfully!). Quick spot checks are the best way to figure out if students are learning what they need to know. Some examples of old-school library formative assessment is the 3-2-1 Assessment, the minute paper, or the muddiest point exercise.

The issue here is that formative assessment is hugely important--but it does not unequivocally show student success, the kind of thing where you can equate how well someone learned something. This has become what I call "the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg" for the library. If the library could find a way to prove their impact on each student, this would mean we could fight things like budget cuts and get new positions more readily. Formative assessment is also not the type of thing that you want to use to assess whether someone is a good teacher or not. My feeling is that it is mainly an ethereal kind of assessment--temporary and made to incite change in the student or instructor.

Another form that assessment takes is self-assessment during the ADDIE process. Some examples of this are to check back to make sure that the lesson or tutorial that you are designing teaches the learning objectives you hope the students will master. You may wish to do a usability test to try out the website, tutorial, or instruction on a learner or two and see if they understand the learning objectives after having gone through the instructional intervention.

I am excited to learn more about assessment and I have made this an area of growth for myself personally and for our department. To do my part, I am going to the ARL Assessment Conference in October. The past proceedings are published up until 2014 and these are a treasure trove of ideas that I have yet to dive into. I also worked to reorganize our department to make room for a Coordinator of Instructional Assessment, who just started in March. Through these methods, I hope to become an assessment guru!

This was the last blog post in the ADDIE series. If you have questions or comments, or wish to know more about a specific part of the process, please let me know!

ADDIE Week 4: Implementation

This blog post is part of a series. If you did not read the previous posts, you may wish to start here.

The Implementation Phase of ADDIE is usually a lot shorter than the other phases that you have tackled up until now. Back in the Analysis phase, you should have determined what the best delivery method would be for your project. Now is the time to put that plan in to motion. Did you make a video? Perhaps you should upload the video to YouTube or Teacher Tube. Are you delivering an in-person instruction session? Put the final touches on it, show up to the class, and teach it. If you made something online, the implementation phase also includes marketing the new video or tutorial, putting it on your LibGuides Template guide, embedding it on your library's tutorials webpage, and making sure that other librarians know of its existence. If it is a large-scale comprehensive tutorial like an undergraduate research tutorial, you might want to send emails to your composition instructors or teach an info session for your university's office of faculty excellence. Make sure to update all the links for your tutorial if anything has changed.

Our next post is about evaluation, but don't forget assessment at this stage, either. See you next week!

ADDIE Week 3: Development

This is the third part in a five-part series. If you have not read the previous weeks' posts, you may want to start reading at ADDIE for Librarians.

We have been talking about the basic instructional design (ID) process called ADDIE. Week 3 of this blog series is about the Development phase, which is the phase most people think of as ID. Development includes the creation of learning objectives and creating the tutorial itself. This can take a lot of forms, including a lesson plan, a video, a LibGuide, or an interactive HTML tutorial. It has been my experience that the development phase can take the longest to complete. Instead of telling you step-by-step how to create a video or make an interactive tutorial, I want to give you two ideas of innovative software products to try.

ThingLink: http://thinglink.com/

An old friend told me about ThingLink recently. It is a free product, with an upgrade available for $35 a year. It creates a tutorial that allows the user to click around on the screen, revealing information bubbles. I have used it to make a virtual tour of a journal article that helps the student locate citation information. Here is an example:





This could also be used for more graphical information, if a photograph was used as the background image.

Timeglider: https://timeglider.com

This is a timeline app. It is free of charge, with an upgrade available. I have used it to create an example of the information timeline, which describes to students how long it takes for items to become published. Here is an example of a timeline using the Benghazi attack as an example:






How do you learn how to use these (and other) software packages? I recommend just playing around with them. Most are pretty user friendly. If the software package you would like to learn requires more experience, you can also try accessing tutorials on Lynda.com, or many software packages come with tutorials, as well.

ADDIE Week 2: Design

This week's discussion on ADDIE brings us to the Design phase. The Design phase is often confused with the Development phase because most people think that this is when the tutorial or instruction is created. In a way, it is when it is created, but not as far as putting the tutorial together. Think of the Design phase as an advanced planning stage when learning objectives are created, as well as scripts and storyboards. Like the Analysis phase, you will have to think things through in greater detail before moving on to the creation of the tutorial. A good script is key for creating a strong video tutorial, but before you create that, create 2-3 learning objectives that you would like to teach in the video or instruction. Keeping the number of learning objectives to 2 or 3 will help you in creating a video no longer than 5 minutes. Here are some examples of things you will create during the Design phase:

Learning Objectives

Here are some examples of learning objectives from Joyner Library's Library 101 tutorial.

1) Students will be able to describe the research process and selecting a topic.

2) Students will be able to illustrate the information timecycle.

 
Script

You will create a script of everything you will say in a video. This script will usually be about a page long for a 5 minute video. Make sure to try to read the writing out loud. Sometimes you will find that certain phrases sound funny when you are speaking them in a normal speaking voice and need to be changed.

Storyboard

Using Microsoft Word or even pen and paper, you can create a storyboard that will allow you to start to plan out the video. Use your script and break it up with still images and direction for the video. I have included an example of a video I made about our Pull and Hold service. You can also google storyboard templates and use a pen and paper.

Image Credit: Katy Kavanagh Webb

 PowerPoints, Still Shots, and Intro/Outros

During the Design phase, I like to decide what visual language I will convey in the video. Sometimes I make a PowerPoint that acts as a backdrop for the video. I also may make an introduction clip with some audio and text, or use one that I have used in previous videos. This will make it look like a more professional product at the end.