Most students agreed or strongly agreed that working with the Online Course Librarian improved their research skills and understanding of library resources and services. There were eight students who strongly disagreed with this statement and one who was undecided.
It would be helpful to compile reasons why students found the interactions to be either helpful or unhelpful so that future Online Course Librarians can draw from these reasons to create a stronger program.
It may be helpful to ask students why they didn’t contact the online course librarian or to rate how comfortable they feel contacting the librarian. These questions will further enhance this assessment survey and give course librarians more information on how to enhance the service.
Several of the student responses to the open ended questions were similar with the most common responses being generic positive comments about the service, the librarians had good availability and response times, and that the librarians taught students how to research.
Negative comments and suggestions for improvement were minimal. In order to improve assessment of aspects of this program, such as librarian availability, the online course librarians should track time spent available to students and measure response times.
Most of the negative feedback was contradicted in positive feedback. A student stated that Interlibrary Loan has slow turnaround rates while another student marvels at how quickly they received their articles. Another student responded that these services were unnecessary for graduate students while another talked about how helpful the service is, especially for graduate students.
There are some suggestions for improvement that can help the Online Course Librarian program overall. One student complained that there are access issues for students with disabilities, including difficulty using the website with a screen reader. The library should look into how screen readers affect the library’s website. Several other students commented that the library website or the databases were not user friendly. In order to improve these services the librarians could create instructional materials to teach students how to use databases and also look into the library website to see if it is user friendly.