Illinois Licensure Testing System (ILTS) Study Guides are now available at Founders Memorial Library.
Passage of the state tests, administered by the Illinois State Board of Education, is required before newly minted graduates can begin their classroom careers. Those claiming multiple endorsements must pass multiple tests following initial licensure.
Licensure candidates with NIU OneCards can borrow the library’s books free of charge from the Circulation Desk for up to two hours; although the books are considered reference materials and cannot leave the library, photocopying of the practice tests is allowed.
Guides are available in Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, Middle Grades English Language Arts, Health Education, Physical Education, Reading Teacher, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History, Political Science, Learning Behavior Specialist I and Spanish.
Alissa Droog, assistant professor and Education and Social Science Librarian, credits Department of Curriculum and Instruction Chair Sally Blake for the idea.
“Dr. Blake reached out to me mid-fall term last year to say, ‘We’ve got a lot of students taking various licensure tests. Is there any possibility that we could get some study guides to support them?’ I said, ‘Let me look because the library doesn’t typically collect things like that,’ ” Droog says.
“So, we ended up working with about a dozen people – not just in the College of Education, but with everybody who supports the various pieces of teacher licensure – to figure out which tests were needed,” she adds. “And then we ordered them all.”
Faculty teaching licensure courses do cover what students need to know and understand for the state exams, Blake says, but those details are woven throughout a semester of classes. The study guides consolidate them.
“Our students are getting the information, but they’re not always focusing on the constructs of how it fits,” Blake says. “What this is doing is putting those constructs of what the big ideas should be and then helping them tie that back to their classes.”
Chris Lowe, the college’s assistant director for Student Success, agrees.
“You might get a little bit in one class and a little bit in another – it’s spread out across five or 10 or 15 different classes – but having it all in one place can really help guide students in the right direction as they prepare,” Lowe says. “What is this test? What should I be expecting? How do I prepare for it? How is the test formatted? What should my approach be?”
The purchase (using NIU Foundation dollars from the Bernadine C. Hanby Endowment Fund) serves another need, Lowe adds.
“The big picture from a student success standpoint is that we’re very cognizant of the fact that many of our students are struggling financially right now, and that these kinds of resources help them prepare beyond the classes they’re taking,” Lowe says.
“We wanted to find the best pathway to help support students to be able to access these materials and using them to prepare – and putting them on equal footing with students who might have access to them in other ways,” he adds. “I think it’s going to be hugely beneficial for students in the College of Education and across campus.”
Droog now will keep the collection current.
“Most of these tests are updated every three to five years, and my job is to stay up to date and checking annually on which of the tests are being updated and then ordering the new guides,” Droog says. “Every time we get a new test, we get a new study guide. That’s just going to be an annual to-do-list item for me.”
She received curation advice from chairs, program coordinators, teacher licensure coordinators and academic advisors in departments such as Curriculum and Instruction, Kinesiology and Physical Education, Special and Early Education, English, History and Mathematics as well as the Secondary Science programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Founders Memorial Library colleagues including Dee Anna Phares (assistant professor and librarian for the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations) and staff in the Course Reserves office and Technical Services helped to make the collection shelf-ready.
Email adroog@niu.edu for more information.
