IDNA for Librarians: Assessing Instructional Development Needs

Library instruction has grown more complex as the information literacy movement has flourished. Increasingly, librarians are adopting active and collaborative teaching methods and seeking guidance in formal instructional development programs. The Instructional Development Needs Assessment (IDNA) survey, a product of the U. S. Department of Energy, Technology Transfer Program, offers instructional development planners a powerful needs assessment tool that actively involves potential participants in the selection of program topics and levels of training. In the IDNA study described in the article, librarians rated 115 teaching tasks based on their assessment of task difficulty, importance in the learning process, and frequency of performance. Sorting mean scores from highest to lowest produced a prioritized list of instructional development needs and desired levels of training. The results of this study show IDNA to be a useful and convenient instructional needs assessment tool.