Description

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From GSLIS Catalog: 

The course applies the principles of evaluation research to contemporary information management problems. It covers the fundamentals of identifying and investigating problems relevant to continuous quality improvement and communicating the results to decision makers.

-- Click the buttons below to go to course objectives, student learning outcomes, and course design specifics --

Objectives    Outcomes    Design

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I. Course Objectives:

 
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To study the domain and purpose of evaluation, and the principles, design, and framework of evaluation research

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To apply evaluation research method to investigate contemporary library issues, and solve practical problems relevant to the field of library and information science

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To acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to evaluate LIS research papers and conduct usability evaluations

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To become familiar with the evaluation research process by designing a survey instrument and preparing a professional quality evaluation research proposal

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To acquire a basic understanding of descriptive and inferential statistics, and the ability to select and use appropriate statistical methods for evaluation research

 

II.  Student Learning Outcomes [by number from GSLIS Web]: 1, 4, 5, 7, 9

bulletDemonstrate the ability to apply standards relevant to specific information service activities.
bulletAnalyze, synthesize, and communicate information and knowledge in a variety of formats.
bullet Recognize existing and potential problems in a workplace and devise strategies to resolve them.
bulletApply relevant research studies to tasks requiring problem solving and critical thinking.
bulletRespond to diversity among individuals and communities through policies, collections, and services.
 

 

III. Course Design Specifics:

The class session will be a combination of lecture, discussion, demo and practice of specific research designs, instrumentation, and statistical notions. As a part of class requirement, students will be involved in presenting as a group to the class on a variety of real-life library evaluation case studies included in one of the required textbooks. A special class session (9/24/07) is arranged during which seven panel members representing academic libraries, public libraries, school libraries, special libraries, archives, and information systems will talk about the evaluation research and practice they conduct in real world information settings. The session will help students to recognize the importance and relevance of evaluation skills in a variety of information environments and will inspire students with interesting ideas for evaluation research projects.

We will be using Internet resources and online statistical tools. We will also learn to perform very basic statistics analyses using SPSS or Excel.

 

 

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Rong Tang 2007.
Site created by Rong Tang August 2007.