Friends of the UNCG Libraries

The University Libraries' Kathy Crowe, along with Communication Studies Professor Jody Natalle, received UNCG's Student Learning Enhancement Award last year. This short video describes how they partnered together to improve students' information literacy and highlights the important role the University Libraries play in the assessment of learning outcomes.

University Libraries’ Associate Dean for Public Services Kathryn Crowe and Dr. Elizabeth Natalle from Communication Studies won the 2012 Student Learning Enhancement Award from the UNCG Senate Student Learning Enhancement Committee.   Crowe and Natalle’s study assessed information literacy skills in Communication Studies (CST) 300, a core course required of all CST majors. After identifying specific learning outcomes Crowe used a rubric to score a “real-life’ performance evaluation in the form of a worksheet.   After an initial pilot in 2009 indicated that students were not gaining needed skills several changes were made during subsequent semesters: (1) requiring students to take several modules of the Libraries’ online tutorial (2) delaying the library instruction session so that students have more time to develop their topics and absorb material from the tutorial (3) developing a tutorial on primary sources in Communication Studies.   The scores improved dramatically fo...