Teaching information literacy and evidence-based practice in an undergraduate speech-language pathology program: A student reflection

Purpose: This study assessed teaching information literacy and evidence-based practice skills using an active-learning library workshop in an under- graduate speech-language pathology capstone course. Method: Students’ responses regarding teaching in- formation literacy skills and evidence-based practice using a workshop, which was collaboratively de- signed and taught by a health sciences librarian and a speech-language pathology faculty member, were measured using the one-minute paper (OMP; Angelo & Cross, 1993). Fifty-one OMPs were collected over a 2-year period. Students were asked 2 questions on the OMP: “What information did you learn today that you think will be most useful to you in your speech- language pathology and audiology course work?” and “What question(s) do you still have?” Student reflections were analyzed using qualitative methods. Results: Responses to the first question revealed 6 themes that students found helpful; the most common concept was search strategies. Student feedback on the second question generated 10 themes. The most common theme was not having any questions. Students asked about evidence appraisal and why the material was not introduced earlier. Conclusion: The benefits of a librarian and faculty member collaboratively teaching undergraduate students information literacy skills for finding evidence- based information are highlighted. Results indicate that students learned effective strategies for finding evidence-based information and support integrating information literacy into the speech-language pathology curriculum early and often

Bringing in the Experts: Library Research Guide Usability Testing in a Computer Science Class

Objective – We sought to develop best practices for creating online research guides in an academic library.Methods – We performed usability tests of particular library research guides in order to determine how to improve them. Students in a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) class (n=20) participated in the studies both as subjects of the tests and as evaluators of the results. The students were each interviewed and then asked to review the interviews recorded of four other classmates. Based on their own experience with the guides and their viewing of their classmates using the guides, the students worked with librarians to develop best practices.Results – Students were generally unfamiliar with the library\u27s research guides prior to the study. They identified bibliographic databases as the most important links on the guides and felt that these should be prominently placed. Opinions about many specific features (e.g., images, length of guide, annotations) varied widely, but students felt strongly that there should be some organizational consistency among the guides.Conclusions – The importance that students placed on consistency led the library to adopt guidelines dictating the inclusion of a table of contents and short list of major databases at the top of each guide, as well as uniform placement of certain other elements

Reference management software: A comparative analysis of four products

Reference management (RM) software is widely used by researchers in the health and natural sciences. Librarians are often called upon to provide support for these products. The present study compares four prominent RMs: CiteULike, RefWorks, Mendeley, and Zotero, in terms of features offered and the accuracy of the bibliographies that they generate. To test importing and data management features, fourteen references from seven bibliographic databases were imported into each RM, using automated features whenever possible. To test citation accuracy, bibliographies of these references were generated in five different styles. The authors found that RefWorks generated the most accurate citations. The other RMs offered contrasting strengths: CiteULike in simplicity and social networking, Zotero in ease of automated importing, and Mendeley in PDF management. Ultimately, the choice of an RM should reflect the user\u27s needs and work habits. © 2011, Ron Gilmour and Laura Cobus-Kuo. Used with permission

Bringing in the experts: Library research guide usability testing in a computer science class

Objective: We sought to develop best practices for creating online research guides in an academic library. Methods: We performed usability tests of particular library research guides in order to determine how to improve them. Students in a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) class (n=20) participated in the studies both as subjects of the tests and as evaluators of the results. The students were each interviewed and then asked to review the interviews recorded of four other classmates. Based on their own experience with the guides and their viewing of their classmates using the guides, the students worked with librarians to develop best practices. Results: Students were generally unfamiliar with the library\u27s research guides prior to the study. They identified bibliographic databases as the most important links on the guides and felt that these should be prominently placed. Opinions about many specific features (e.g., images, length of guide, annotations) varied widely, but students felt strongly that there should be some organizational consistency among the guides. Conclusions: The importance that students placed on consistency led the library to adopt guidelines dictating the inclusion of a table of contents and short list of major databases at the top of each guide, as well as uniform placement of certain other elements.© 2013 Cobus-Kuo, Gilmour, and Dickson

Compendium of the health and wellness coaching literature

Health and wellness coaching (HWC) for lifestyle behavior change is emerging as a practice, role, and profession, in diverse health care, employee wellness, and community settings. Health care professionals apply HWC as a behavior change methodology for the prevention and treatment of diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic disorders. The purpose of this systematic review was to provide a comprehensive and organized compendium of HWC literature. To date, extant HWC literature remains scattered with no meaningful summary accessible. Lack of comprehensive summary stems from lack of consensus on HWC definition and standards. We applied a recently proposed, standardized definition of HWC to determine compendium inclusion criteria for peer-reviewed, data-based literature from relevant search engines (ie, PubMed, PsychInfo, and CINAHL). A systematic review process was executed and ultimately yielded 219 articles meeting HWC inclusion criteria. Of these, 150 were databased and the remainder were expert opinion or review-style articles. A summary of results generally reveals HWC as a promising intervention for chronic diseases though further research is needed in most categories. The resulting HWC compendium organizes and describes the quantity and quality of available literature for the use and benefit of HWC practitioners and researchers