Assessment Practices and Metrics for the 21st Century: A 2021 Participatory Learning Experience

Training Series

Scope

NOTE: Registration is Limited to 20 Individuals

Over the course of the past three years, NISO has organized training series of eight webinars on assessment practices and metrics in the 21st Century. Building upon the foundational knowledge of those webinars, the NISO 2021 training series will provide an interactive and participatory cohort-based experience, which is focused on improving assessment practices in your own setting. Through this venue, we want to create a community of learning, with meaningful professional experiences and mentorships, sharing experiences, and getting to know each other better and support each other through this process.

COVID-19 has provided opportunities for content to be produced and made available in an unprecedented way.  Beyond the rich content of the 24 webinars offered through NISO in the last three years (201820192020), the full set of 2020 Library Assessment Conference Presentations are now available on YouTube, as well as many other useful presentations through RIPL (Research Institute for Public Libraries), Data Boot Camp, and the IRDL (Institute for Research Design in Librarianship) Speaker Series. Our goal is to create opportunities for reflection and engagement with this and related content in order to improve the assessment practice in the participating libraries, and to support assessment practitioners and administrators. In addition to the weekly 60-minute facilitated sessions, participants will spend 60 minutes preparing some reflections and content to share with the larger group each week. As in the past, this training series will be facilitated by Martha Kyrillidou, who will also provide interactive exercises to be used for improving assessment practice in your library.

Training Facilitator

Training Facilitator: Martha Kyrillidou of QualityMetrics, LLC

Martha Kyrillidou consults in management, evaluation, assessment and R&D activities. She helps libraries respond to customer needs through the development of user-focused services and culture that enhance the user-experience. With an understanding of trends in services, collections, facilities, and personnel she can help a library tell their story through narratives, visuals and numbers. Martha can help you with accreditation, grant writing, evaluation plans or serve as your external evaluator and data analyst for your grant and sponsored activities. As the original architect of the StatsQUAL suite of services at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Martha is well positioned to consult and help you maximize the benefits you derive from LibQUAL+ClimateQUAL and MINES for Libraries.  She has also worked on digital library as well as special collections assessment and evaluation methods. Her work has defined the growing and dynamic library assessment community of practice across the globe.

Martha manages QualityMetrics, LLC, a library consulting practice that brings both qualitative and quantitative expertise to library management and planning activities. She is a Research Associate at the iSchool at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and has taught Research Methods at the iSchools at Kent State University and the University of Maryland. She has served on the planning committee for the Library Assessment Conference (LAC) since 2006, is a member of the Board of the International Conference of Performance Measurement and Metrics in Library and Information Services (LibPMC), and a member of the Advisory Committee for the International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML). She serves as the chair of the NISO Z39.7 Information Services and Use: Metrics & Statistics for Libraries and Information Providers – Data Dictionary, is a technical advisor to the ISO related group, and a member of the IMLS Library Statistics Working Group. She is an expert library evaluator who has conducted numerous LSTA evaluations, and she also consults on library space planning and engages in visioning for libraries with colleagues around the globe.

Course Duration and Dates

The series consists of eight (8) segments, one per week and each lasting approximately 60 minutes. 

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Scheduled start times do vary across the eight sessions. Please review the dates and times shown below to confirm that your own availability matches. The time zone displayed is in Eastern Daylight Time (US & Canada). 

For each segment participants are expected to do another 60 minutes of homework to bring to the group their own reflections and experiences and share forming a learning community of practice.

Guest lecturers may be featured in specific segments, as the course moderator deems appropriate. 

Each session will be recorded and links to that archived recording will be disseminated to course registrants within 2 business days of the close of the specific session. The recordings will not be publicly available after the event as they reflect the specific lessons of the specific libraries participating this year.

Event Sessions

Thursday, April 1, 2021

2:30pm - 3:30pm  Participatory Learning (followed by a 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment will focus on participants learning from each other about how assessment is organized in their specific library settings. 

Friday, April 9, 2021

12:00 Noon - 1:00 pm  Participatory Learning (followed by a 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment will focus on taking stock of what has happened, where we are, and what is next (sharing exercise)

 

Friday, April 23, 2021

12:00 Noon - 1:00pm Participatory Learning (followed by a 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment is the first of two focusing on library transformation stories and space design changes.

Thursday, April 29, 2021

2:30pm - 3:30pm Participatory Learning (followed by a 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment is the second of two focusing on library transformation stories and space design changes.

Friday, May 7, 2021

2:30pm - 3:30pm  Participatory learning (followed by 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment will focus on the North Star planning framework (sharing exercise)

Thursday, May 13, 2021

2:30pm - 3:30pm   Participatory learning (followed by a 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment will be the first of two focusing on improving organizational climate and culture. 

Friday, May 21, 2021

2:30pm - 3:30pm   Participatory learning (followed by a 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment will be the second of two focusing on improving organizational climate and culture. 

 

Thursday, May 27, 2021

11:30am - 12:30pm (Followed by a 30-minute "office hour" with Martha)

This segment will focus on a prioritization exercise (sharing exercise). 

Additional Information

  • Registration is limited to 20 individual registrants. 

  • IMPORTANT NOTE:  Scheduled start times do vary across the eight sessions. Please mark all times on your own calendar accordingly. The time zone displayed is in Eastern Daylight Time (US & Canada). 

  • Cancellations made before noon on Friday, April 9, 2021 will receive a refund, less a $35 cancellation. After that date, there are no refunds.

  • Registrants will receive detailed instructions about accessing the virtual conference via e-mail the Friday prior to the event. (Anyone registering between Monday and the close of registration will receive the message shortly after the registration is received, within normal business hours.) Due to the widespread use of spam blockers, filters, out of office messages, etc., it is your responsibility to contact the NISO office if you do not receive login instructions before the start of the webinar.

  • If you have not received your Login Instruction e-mail by 10 a.m. (ET) on the day before the training session, please contact the NISO office at nisohq@niso.org for immediate assistance.

  • If you are registering someone else from your organization, either use that person's e-mail address when registering or contact nisohq@niso.org to provide alternate contact information.

  • Registrants will receive an e-mail message containing access information to the archived conference recording within 48 hours after the event. This recording access is only to be used by the registrant's organization.

For Online Events

  • You will need a computer for the presentation and Q&A.

  • Audio is available through the computer (broadcast) and by telephone. We recommend you have a set-up for telephone audio as back-up even if you plan to use the broadcast audio as the voice over Internet isn't always 100% reliable.

Please check your system in advance to make sure it meets the Zoom meeting requirements. It is your responsibility to ensure that your system is compatible prior to the beginning of each session.