Lunch Discussion Notes: Assessment Tools & Technology

Here are the notes from one of the lunch discussion groups at our recent Putting Assessment into Practice: A Library Instruction Workshop.

The topic of this discussion was: Assessment Tools & Technology. Thanks to Jennifer Fairchild for moderating this discussion!

Favorite Tools:

• Game Show Software (about $350) and Who’s First (buzzers, about $150). Both are available through Trainer’s Warehouse. http://www.trainerswarehouse.com/default.asp
• TurningPoint Audience Response System, the clickers and the software. http://www.turningtechnologies.com/

Available Tools:

• Survey Monkey: free version and paid
• Quia: includes surveys, quizzes, html coding, web pages, tutorial, games, classroom management. Can be open source or password protected. http://www.quia.com/web
• Blackboard: http://www.blackboard.com/inpractice/highered/index.bb
• Moodle: open source http://moodle.org/
• ANGEL: many higher education institutions are replacing Blackboard with ANGEL http://www.angellearning.com/
  
• E-Portfolio: http://www.eportfolio.org/
• Online Faculty Learning Commons
• WebQ/Catalyst
• “real life” tools (i.e. the catalog or websites) used to compare sources or locate items during a class session for example

Impediments to our instruction and assessment:

• Budget cuts
• Limited classroom time, how do we fit instruction and assessment into one short session with a class?

What could be improved?:

• Resource sharing! It would be wonderful if all of the library communities of Washington State could easily access and share instruction (i.e. online tutorials) and assessment tools with colleagues so that the wheel is not being reinvented over and over again.