Evidence-based instruction:

assessing student work using rubrics and citation analysis to inform instructional design

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a study carried out by librarians in Champlain College who developed a two-pronged authentic assessment approach to measure the information literacy (IL) levels and determine the information seeking habits of students while conducting research for academic purposes. Librarians devised and developed an IL rubric and a citation analysis checklist for the assessment of first-year annotated bibliography assignment papers. This paper illustrates the merits of rubric-based, citation analysis assessment measures using authentic student coursework as a highly effective method of determining student outcomes assessment and information seeking habits while engaging in academic research. Findings from this study also suggest that authentic assessment is an extremely useful tool for instruction librarians to identify areas of IL that require further instructional support. This study is of importance to librarians wishing to adopt rubric-based and citation analysis authentic methods for student outcomes assessment.