36 - Developing Best Practices For Instruction Across Different Health Sciences Disciplines

Background: A group of academic health sciences librarians provide information literacy instruction at a private health sciences university. Because the university doesn’t have an introductory information literacy course, the librarians created a process to incorporate information literacy instruction into the university curriculum to promote and inform students about library services. Recent library staffing changes and a move to primarily online instruction during the Covid-19 pandemic, required creating a new process for teaching several courses in five different disciplines over a three-week period for the Fall 2021 semester.

Description: Given the wide range of topics and short turnaround time, the librarians created a flexible plan for each class that would include an orientation to library services along with the information literacy component.

The team had to adapt the information literacy component of each class to include databases and search strategies that were most relevant to the subject. Based on the instructor’s request, review of the course syllabus, and length of the class session, the librarians developed course content including basic to in-depth search strategies, instruction on proper APA or AMA citation format, and short in-class assignments to encourage active participation. The team also developed a slide template and outline that could be modified for each course. The librarians met before and after each course to plan, debrief and adapt their approach accordingly for the next course.

Conclusion: This project resulted in a process and guidelines for providing information literacy instruction in a variety of disciplines. The guidelines include suggestions such as using ice breaker questions, or small assignments that the students can work on in class to reinforce student learning. Also, pre- and post-tests are helpful in determining students’ knowledge of the research process and how instruction can be modified for future classes. Moving forward the team plans to develop a curriculum map in order to better track where students are in the program and thus their familiarity with the research process.