Shaping the Campus Conversation on Student Learning and Experience: Activating the Results of Assessment in Action

The Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Assessment in Action (AiA) was a multiyear professional development program that ran from 2013 to 2016, funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and in partnership with the Association for Institutional Research and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. A central part of the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries initiative, it engaged more than 200 higher education institutions, generating evidence of library impact and advancing library leadership and evidence-based advocacy. This publication provides, in a single and comprehensive work, the story of AiA—the context surrounding its development, findings of the team-based assessment projects, insights about the program results, reflections about its impact, and recommendations for future directions.

In three sections—Results, Reflections, and Advancing Assessment to the Future—as well as eleven appendices of supporting material about the development and execution of the program, Shaping the Campus Conversation on Student Learning and Experience paints a vivid picture of the thinking that went into creating AiA, the results of the individual projects, the impact on participating teams, and the broader importance for the profession. While designed to capture the stories and successes of AiA, the book also provides effective strategies for applying the AiA findings and helping academic librarians develop assessments that result in meaningful impacts on their own campuses, using these assessments to better tell the story of the contributions libraries make.

Shaping the Campus Conversation on Student Learning and Experience serves anyone seeking to activate the results of the AiA program: academic librarians new to assessment; libraries that have ongoing assessment programs and are looking for new directions or ideas for expanding their efforts; librarians demonstrating to campus administrators the library’s impact on student learning and success; campus assessment officers and higher education administrators; and library and information science faculty and scholars.