Student Engagement AND Assessment in the Virtual Library Classroom? Google Forms to the Rescue!
By Lily Martin, MLIS, Reference & Instruction Librarian, Levy Library at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Samantha Walsh, MLS, MA, Hunter College Libraries, CUNY Hunter College
While the transition to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic posed many challenges, the opportunities presented should not be understated. When moving an annual EndNote workshop for medical students online, librarian instructors at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai needed a way to ensure that students were following along and engaged. This led to the conception of an interactive online form completed throughout the workshop, as well as an overhaul of the workshop’s learning objectives.
In order to realign our session with medical school priorities, as well as the ACRL Framework Information Literacy for Higher Education and the AAMC LCME Standards, we developed new learning objectives. Previous learning objectives focused on technical aspects of the EndNote software, which remained a requirement for this session. Our new learning objectives were designed to incorporate tangible academic integrity concepts and skills alongside reference management and EndNote-specific skills.
2021 Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, students will be able to…
- Give credit to the original ideas of others through proper citation.
- Accurately paraphrase a passage while remaining loyal to the meaning of the original text.
- Create a reference library and bibliography using EndNote.
- Navigate the nuances of academic publishing and the various styles, standards, and tools available to maintain academic integrity.
These new learning objectives were developed using Backwards Design principles (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), as they set achievable & skill-based goals for the session. The learning objectives guided the development of deliverables for students to complete throughout the session. However, as the session was set to take place virtually via Zoom, we needed to find a way to track students’ progress on deliverables. Using the freely available version of Google Forms, we created a form shared with students via the Zoom chat feature at the beginning of the session. Students were asked to keep the Google Form, EndNote, and Zoom open on their computers for the duration of the one-hour session. While we were concerned that students would become confused needing to toggle between multiple programs, we received no questions or complaints during or after the sessions.
The form was divided into four sections, with each section appearing on a new page after the previous was submitted. Section one provided the learning objectives and asked for the student’s name and email. Section two, which students also completed at the beginning of the session, asked via multiple choice if they had previously used a reference management software, and via free text, “When incorporating outside sources into your work, what are your main concerns? (eg. Self Plagiarism).” Unlike the upcoming deliverables related to our learning objectives, these questions were meant to solicit information about students’ needs and habits to inform future instruction. After completing section two, students were asked to keep the form open in the background and focus on the Zoom lecture. This first half of the session focused on academic integrity and style guides. Librarian lecturers discussed plagiarism in the context of research misconduct, incorporating sources into one’s work, style guides, and the process of using a journal’s submission guidelines to identify the appropriate style guide.
After this lecture, students were asked to return to the Google Form and answer two questions designed to align with learning objectives 2 and 4. The first question asked students to correctly identify the most appropriate paraphrase for a given passage, while the second tasked students with locating the submission guidelines for a journal of their choice and to report the journal’s citation style. While we acknowledge that these questions do not require much critical thinking, we believe they are valuable in prompting students to navigate submission guidelines and to consider the context of publication. The final portion of the session consisted of an EndNote demonstration. The students were then asked to return to the Google Form and complete the final questions, designed to ensure that they had installed EndNote on their computer and followed along during the demonstration. Students were asked to submit a screenshot of their EndNote library and to create a JAMA/AMA-style citation for an article in their library, thus satisfying learning objectives 1 and 3. Finally, students were given the option of leaving questions or comments, and were asked to indicate if they would like to be contacted with an answer.
As we were asking students to monitor and utilize Zoom, EndNote, Google Forms, and their browsers all at once, we anticipated that some students would not successfully submit the form, and that many would ask clarifying questions at the end of the sessions. However, the form was submitted on time by 100% of the attending students, and questions related to the form and submission were limited. The majority of the questions asked at the close of each session were related to EndNote functionality and technical issues. The Google Form successfully allowed us to track attendance as well as ensure that students worked towards each learning objective.
Of the 107 students who submitted the form, 39 responded to the optional last field of the form. 7 simply said “N/A” or “No questions”, 4 asked questions about EndNote functionality, and 1 student asked about library services. The majority of respondents, 27 (69%) students, used this space to thank us for the session. Students commented on the interactive nature as well as the usefulness of the content. While these statements were appreciated, we were most excited by the low number of questions about EndNote functionality (3.7% of all attendees). When these sessions were taught in person without a Google Form or physical worksheet of any kind, a large portion of the class would have clarifying questions about EndNote. This required instructors to provide 30+ minutes of one-on-one assistance to students after each session.
An online form is an easy and free way to foster engagement and assess student understanding of stated learning objectives during online library instruction. For the 2022 iteration of this instructional session, which was held in person, librarian instructors reused the Google Form. Students were equally engaged with the form in person and it continued to allow us to measure student learning.
Bibliography
“Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education”, American Library Association, February 9, 2015. http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework (Accessed November 30, 2022) Document ID: b910a6c4-6c8a-0d44-7dbc-a5dcbd509e3f
LCME: Liaison Committee on Medical Education. Functions and Structure of a Medical School Standards for Accreditation of Medical Education Programs Leading to the MD Degree. Association of American Medical Colleges and American Medical Association. March 2022. https://lcme.org/publications/
Wiggins, & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd edition.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.