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 --

I. Course Objectives:

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

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

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

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

• 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

• Demonstrate the ability to apply standards relevant to specific information service activities.
• Analyze, synthesize, and communicate information and knowledge in a variety of formats.
• Recognize existing and potential problems in a workplace and devise strategies to resolve them.
• Apply relevant research studies to tasks requiring problem solving and critical thinking.
• Respond 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 giving group presentations on a number of chapters on evaluation of various library services (e.g., library users, physical collection, reference services, technical services, online systems, information literacy) included in one of the required textbooks. In addition, students may use GSLIS usability lab to run a usability testing session as an extra-credit assignment. The assignment allows students to apply usability evaluation principles to a real-life research experimental setting.

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

Rong Tang 2009.
Site created by Rong Tang February 2009.