Programmatic assessment: Turning process into practice by teaching for learning

in order to improve our library instruction program by identifying and responding to learning problems, a formal pilot assessment was conducted with a group of 48 students enrolled in a summer 2001 pre-freshmen program. The group chosen as a base line group provided us with the opportunity to work with students in four sequential library instruction sessions, allowing us to observe, reflect and respond to learning needs between each session. In the process of designing and executing the assessment system we changed and improved our teaching methods to address the learning problems we discovered. Our intent was to improve the library instruction program in our medium-sized university library by applying what we learned from the pilot to the more typical "one shot" library instruction sessions.