Highline Community College

Authentic Assessment Projects

Project 1: Students were enrolled in I-BEST classes composed of an Early Childhood Education class and a Pre-college Studies class (taught by an ABE/ESL instructor). The information literacy instruction took place in the Pre-college Studies classes during both Winter and Spring quarters 2009. Students completed a group project that required research and a presentation. The ABE/ESL instructor and the librarian met several times to plan instruction sessions tailored to the group project and the students’ needs, and to revise/develop criteria for assessment. The librarian taught three instruction sessions on searching and citing sources during each quarter. During Winter quarter, a rubric was created. After its initial use with the Winter quarter project, it was revised to provide more accurate feedback. The rubric was used by the librarian and the ABE/ESL instructor to assess student learning of research and citation skills; however, this information was not used by the Early Childhood Education instructor in assigning students’ grades. Future collaborations will seek to incorporate the rubric feedback into the actual scores.

Project 2:This project involved providing information literacy instruction to a Speech 100 class in Winter quarter 2009.  The instruction took place in three separate class periods for a total of three hours.  Two hours of instruction covered basic information sources and search techniques for the web and online periodical and book databases available through the library.  Evaluation of information was also addressed.  A new component of instruction by the reference librarian involved understanding and recognizing logical fallacies was added for the third hour of instruction. This was outside the scope of this project and so will not be covered here.

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