Peninsula College has been selected to be one of only five institutions nationwide to participate in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2010 grant dedicated to information literacy. The grant is part of President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that gives summer research experiences to health and library science educators.
The two Peninsula College faculty who will participate in the grant are
Jen Gouge, Program Director for the Medical Assistants program, and
David Kent, Research & Instruction Librarian. They will collaborate to adapt and disseminate an eHealth literacy assessment, originally designed at Central Michigan University, to students enrolled in Peninsula College health-related programs. The other four participating institutions are Oakland Community College (MI), Morehead State University (KY), Oakton Community College (IL), and Daytona State College (FL).
Health faculty and librarians from the five selected universities and colleges will work together to develop their students' eHealth literacy. The code name for this effort is “Focus on Information Technology: Navigation that Emphasizes Scholarly Sources (FITNESS).”
The assessment, called READY:SET or Research Readiness Self-Assessment (RRSA), was created to answer these questions:
• Do future health professionals have the requisite skills to engage in evidence-based practice and lifelong professional education?
• Can they find credible health information for their patients?
READY:SET is an online interactive application that was designed to assist librarians and faculty from different disciplines in their efforts to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to become effective, independent users of secondary source information from digital (electronic) sources.
Digital information competencies are defined as the key attributes, such as knowledge, skills and beliefs, manifested by people who purposefully manage and critically evaluate electronic information (e.g., digital libraries and the internet) and use it to make informed choices.
Specifically, READY:SET aims to develop these eHealth competencies:
1.
What to assume:.......1a. Capability & limitations of media
2.
Where to go:.......2a. Knowledge of channels & sources: electronic, analog, and human
.......2b. Knowledge of entry points (gateways)
.......2c. Knowledge of access barriers
3.
How to use:.......3a. Needs assessment (define task, set goal, plan strategy)
.......3b. Navigation (seek, find, refine, narrow) and critical judgment (verify, check) of content, features, and sources of eHealth multimedia (text, video, audio, graphics)
.......3c. Manipulation of eHealth tools and database search applications to get useful outputs
.......3d. Assessment of relevance (check context)
.......3e. Application of outputs (ethically use, recommend)
4.
How to get better:.......4a. Checking assumptions (question) and skill gaps (learn)
.......4b. Getting help
A National Institutes of Health reviewer described RRSA (now known as READY:SET) as "a useful innovation" where "not only individuals’ actual competence, but also perceived competence, is measured, so that those with a mis-match between the two can be identified and mentored" (NIH Scientific Review Group summary statement, grant application 1R03LM009851-01A1, 2007). The reviewer also commented, "the instrument itself contains valuable feedback mechanisms to help those taking the assessment to improve their skills, an innovative feature."
RRSA was originally designed and continues to be developed by Lana V. Ivanitskaya, Ph.D. and Anne Marie Casey, A.M.L.S. in collaboration with many of their colleagues. To learn more about information literacy, see
http://infolit.org/about-the-national-forum/
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