Assessment is a comprehensive, systematic and continuous activity. A culture of assessment is an ongoing process whereby institutional faculty and staff know and care what assessment results are produced, how these relate to desired outcomes (institutional / organization / programmatic), and are committed to using results for continuous improvement.
The HEDS Research Practice Survey asks students about their research experiences and assesses their skills in finding, evaluating, and citing sources. Your college's results can be compared with results from other institutions. The Research Practice Survey takes ~20 minutes to complete.
For information on cost, suggested uses, or to download a sample survey visit Research Practices Survey.
NSSE has provided since 2013 an Experiences with Information Literacy module. The module asks students about their use of information and how much their instructors emphasized the proper use of information sources.
To view the module questions visit Topical Module: Experiences with Information Literacy.
Project SAILS is one of the earliest information literacy assessment surveys. For more information, visit About our Information Literacy Test.
In order to know whether you've achieved your goal, you must have measurable outcomes and metrics for determining whether these have been met. For instance, instead of stating that students will develop critical thinking skills in writing, oral, and creative processes, which are hard to measure, it is better to reframe the goal by saying that students will demonstrate effective communication of ideas in both oral and written presentations -- which are projects that can be measured.
A variety of instruments exist to gather data, including polls, surveys, and quizzes. Respondents can use the web or a mobile device. Some of the better known ones are:
A list of additional surveys and quizzes can be found at http://sdst.libguides.com/c.php?g=690521&p=4883774
Are students learning? How do you know?
Formative assessment measures what students are learning and allows you to modify your teaching mid-stream. Assessment tools include clickers, quizzes (e.g. Socrative) and quick polls.
Summative assessment measures what students have learnt and includes capstone projects and presentations.
How well are you doing? How do you know?
LibQUAL+ measures library users' minimum, perceived, and desired levels of service quality across three dimensions: Affect of Service, Information Control, and Library as Place so that libraries can assess and improve their services.