A case study for teaching information literacy skills

Area of Science:

• Health Sciences Education
• Biomedical Informatics
• Digital Health Literacy

Background:

• The digital age necessitates new workplace skills in medicine, dentistry, and public health.
• Younger health science students may lack crucial information literacy despite apparent digital comfort.
• Traditional curricula often neglect essential technology integration for clinical training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and assess a research assignment for graduate health science students.
• To develop and integrate information literacy skills with clinical relevance.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of technology-dependent assignments in health science education.

Main Methods:

• A research-based assignment was developed and assessed.
• First-year graduate health science students participated.
• Student performance on technology-dependent and independent tasks was evaluated.

Main Results:

• All students (n=78) succeeded in content-specific, technology-independent tasks.
• Over half (54%) failed to demonstrate competence in web-based, technology-dependent tasks.
• No demographic correlations (age, gender, race) were found with performance.

Conclusions:

• Evidence supports integrating digital technologies and information literacy into health science curricula.
• Curricular development is needed to bridge the gap between digital skills and clinical application.
• This study provides critical data for evaluating new pedagogical approaches in health professions education.