E.g., correlation != causality, achieving this goal requires library services that leverage library collections, etc. - Mark Kille

Of course, Joan and Steve! That's why I say it's the ultimate goal. We're nowhere near being able to do that yet, but we want to make sure that all our baby steps are headed in the right direction. Right now we are trying to figure out how to do it at the departmental level, because that's the level where student learning outcomes are tracked via assignment sampling (scorers apply a rubric). The pilot project is looking for any correlations between good rubric scores and citing sources available through the library (whether actually accessed through the library or not). Looking forward, I can't see how to move from correlation to causality without a control group, and I have no idea how to pull that off without disrupting students' educations at least a little bit. - Mark Kille

Defining "use of collections" would certainly be tricky. Which is why I'm pretty comfortable, at this point, with "other students could replicate the sources used by this student if they used our collections." - Mark Kille

Hm. I might rather see/prove/create an environment where "80 percent of students whose achieve the desired learning outcomes also use the library's collections heavily" (define heavily, right?) than where "there is a 15 percent proven causative correlation between using the library's collections and achieving the desired learning outcomes" (even assuming you could prove it). Causality ain't all that. If they're using the collections, why do you want to chicken-and-egg it? - Marianne

Causality may not be the right goalpost. What I want to demonstrate is something like: "the group of students that draws on a greater percentage of resources available through the library to complete assignments reliably achieve the desired learning outcomes at a higher rate than the group of students that draws on a lower percentage of resources available through the library." Because if that is not the case, then the library is not in line with the educational mission of the institution. - Mark Kille

Kaijsa, you don't need to shut up! I am finding your comments very helpful, and it is good to know that I'm not the only person who gets excited about these kinds of things. I actually *want* to be hammered if I get it wrong. (Insert snarky generalizations about LIS research here.) It is in fact very labor-intensive, not only the data analysis but getting departmental cooperation, and in practice our pilot project has narrowed down to one program. I want to get at least 2 more so I can do some comparative stuff. - Mark Kille

Joan, I will take a second look at the ROI stuff; the utter inapplicability of public-library ROI analyses to what I'm working on may have unfairly primed me to not expect much from the academic ones. - Mark Kille

Joan, I am actually deliberately avoiding instruction as a variable at this point. - Mark Kille

Joan, my spouse is finishing up a stats-heavy PhD. She has been kind enough to help me stay reasonably legit. :) I wouldn't have felt comfortable jumping into a project like this without some amount of expert input. (Re: instruction, you've covered my main reasons; I also think the profession has rushed there first when dealing with assessment and left other areas understudied.) - Mark Kille

Joan, no worries, in a real sense I *don't* know what I'm doing yet. That's one of the reasons I'm doing it. I would love to have the time help--we've been able to dragoon student workers for some of the very drudgy parts, but still, there's a reason for the saying, "If it's not automated, it's not assessment." - Mark Kille

Kaijsa, excellent, thanks! - Mark Kille

I would think "go! go! go!" because I want to know the answer to this question. Badly. - barbara fister