Using an interdisciplinary partnership to develop nursing students' information literacy skills: an evaluation

Area of Science:

• Health Sciences Education
• Information Literacy
• Digital Learning

Background:

• Student-centered active learning necessitates strong information retrieval skills for lifelong learning.
• The health field demands current, evidence-based information, making recency critical.
• Nursing students exhibit a changing demographic, including mature-age learners with potentially lower digital literacy and a preference for external study.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the need for improved electronic information retrieval skills among nursing students.
• To explore the role of interdisciplinary partnerships in developing innovative learning support tools.
• To introduce the Health Online Tutorial as a solution for enhancing student learning in health information seeking.

Main Methods:

• Development of an online database searching tool through interdisciplinary collaboration.
• Focus on supporting diverse student needs, including mature-age and external learners.
• Integration of librarians and faculty expertise to create an innovative educational resource.

Main Results:

• The Health Online Tutorial was developed as a practical example of interdisciplinary collaboration.
• The tool aims to enhance the ability of nursing students to locate and retrieve up-to-date health information.
• It provides a flexible learning solution for students regardless of their on-campus attendance.

Conclusions:

• Interdisciplinary partnerships are effective in creating innovative solutions for student learning support.
• The Health Online Tutorial exemplifies a successful approach to improving health information literacy for nursing students.
• This initiative supports lifelong learning by equipping students with essential digital and information retrieval competencies.