library at Ephesus from sailingissues.com

Library Instruction Sessions:

Librarians collaborate with teaching faculty to help students at all levels and in all programs, on-site and online, to develop the skills, strategies, and knowledge base needed to find, evaluate, and use information effectively. The libraries offer library instruction sessions carefully designed to meet the needs of specific classes, research guides (including online LibGuides), and individual research consultations that can often follow the instruction sessions.  We have been able to offer these for any courses, in any discipline and can tailor the sessions to the degree needed by faculty. 

Data on the instruction sessions given are available in the folio section entitled, Information Literacy.  However, there are also semester long, specific library instruction courses offered for credit, that are administered by various library faculty each year.  These are often modified or adjusted according to faculty need, but some of the core courses are listed here:

LISC 260 - Using Electronic Resource for Research

The library offers an online only course geared toward understanding the wide array of electronic resources available both in the proprietary Mercy databases but also freely available resources on the web.  Attached below is a table with assessment/analysis of the course and future improvement actions. 

HLSC 225 DFA  and HLSC 225 DFB (1 credit each) - Introduction to Health Professions Literature/Scientific Writing:

This course covesr the basics of professional literature searches and scientific writing including where and how to access peer reviewed scientific journals as well as the basic structure of scientific publications. At the completion of the course, the student is able to locate various types of scientific publications by using multiple databases and search engines, and is able to summarize the content of these articles in preparation for a complete literature review and synthesis.  Syllabi attached below.

HLSC 402 - Scientific Writing (2 credits):

Course teaches health care practitioners how to recognize factual information and logical arguments and apply critical analysis to other forms of acquiring knowledge such as authority, rationalization and intuition.  The course is designed as an introduction to critical thinking and to allow the student to be able to search, summarize, synthesize and process the scientific literature. The course also helps students to think more critically about the arguments of others and to understand logical and persuasive arguments in science. Syllabi attached below.

LISC 295 - Digital Storytelling (3 credits) - to be offered in fall, 2012

The library also offers an elective, Topics course in its 295 level.  For the first time starting in fall, 2012, this course will be a joint project between the FCTL and the Library and will focus on Digital Storytelling.  The course is still in development but will provide a unique opportunity for students to engage in multimodal learning around this innovative approach to student learning.