28 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 290 2017 leadership, a group of librarians from a handful of libraries approached COFHE and worked with them to formulate an optional panel of library-related questions that the participating universities and colleges could choose to add to the consortial core of the instrument. We also worked to alert the libraries at the COFHE institutions to the availability of this panel and encouraged them to talk to their institutional research offices if they wanted to see these questions asked. Out of the 34 universities and colleges that ran the survey that year, 29 (85%) ran questions from the new library module, and 27 (79%) chose formulations that were directly comparable. Figure 4 shows the participating institutions and their response rates. Figure 4: Participating institutions and their response rates in the 2015 Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) Enrolled Student Survey ESS—universities and colleges that included the same question about the helpfulness of library instruction. The survey question relevant to instruction was: During the current academic year, how helpful have library classes and presentations been to you? The possible answers were: not very helpful, somewhat helpful, very helpful, and didn’t use. At Cornell 54% of respondents reported having used library classes and presentations in the current academic year. This proportion was somewhat lower at the peer institutions, 42% at the other Ivy League institutions
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