Needs assessment of library instruction at Texas A&M University Libraries using student feedback

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this case study is to identify gaps in service for library instruction conducted at Texas A&M University Libraries by doing a qualitative needs assessment using student feedback.

Design/methodology/approach

Using Atlas.ti, student feedback comments taken from academic years 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 are coded in five fields: semester, classification, most useful, least useful, and comments. Major categories and subcategories are created for coding purposes and queries are run in that software program to identify needs and trends using the categories and subcategories.

Findings

The results demonstrate that a need for technology is high on the list of needs, however, surprisingly; it is instructor style and material that are found to be a slightly bigger need. Students want an engaging, enthusiastic, and basically pleasant instructor, more than their own computer workstation/laptop.

Research limitations/implications

The large number of respondents' feedback is a limiting factor. A point of data saturation is reached. It would be more effective to breakdown the datasets into semesters instead of by years.

Practical implications

With the known results, it would be feasible to present these findings to the library faculty or librarians, with teaching responsibilities, in order to begin addressing improving instructor style. It is also encouraging to discover that students want the ability to follow along, which is an indicator that they want to be engaged and feel that having their own laptop, for example would aid with that.

Originality/value

This unique study looks at library instruction from a student's perspective instead of from a programmatic perspective. This uniqueness opened up the opportunity for continued research using student feedback forms data.

Citation

Gonzalez, A.J. (2009), "Needs assessment of library instruction at Texas A&M University Libraries using student feedback", Performance Measurement and Metrics, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 122-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/14678040911005455