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- Member of: Pardon, Kevin
- Member of: State of Arizona Reports
- Member of: MLFC Learning Futures Collaborative Collection
The African-American community has played a historically significant role in the advancement of Arizona and our region. The future success of our state relies on our ability to strengthen our communities and empower them to meet and exceed their vast potential. This project between the community and the University was undertaken to help advance a better understanding of the changing dynamics of Arizona’s African-American population and the critical issues that require our collective attention in terms of education, health care, the economy, culture and leadership.
Objective: to explore currently available Open Educational Resources related to Health Sciences programs to increase available options for free, high quality, online educational materials to support Health Sciences faculty, researchers, and students in online, hybrid, and in-person courses at Arizona State University.
Background/Methods: Following the successful Open Access movement, the Open Education movement is expanding free, online access to Open Educational Resources (OERs), beyond research published in scholarly journals. Similar to the Open Access movement, Open Educational resources are of high quality, available for free, online, with minimal or no licensing restrictions. They include, but are not limited to: syllabi and course modules, open textbooks, and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Arizona State University (ASU) has many fully online degree programs from undergraduate to graduate level, as well as supplemental and continuing education certificates. ASU also has many hybrid programs and in-person courses that include online components. Instructors are often searching for online videos or other high quality, online educational materials that they can incorporate in their courses. OERs may provide some useful options. ASU Libraries became involved in Open Education Week in March 2013. To expand on our involvement and increase resource options at ASU, the presenters decided to begin identifying useful OERs for health sciences. To do so, the presenters searched for and evaluated 2-3 sources for OERs each and noted the advantages and/or disadvantages of each, as well as any highly useful specific OERs.
Results: The presenters will discuss the advantages and/or disadvantages of evaluated sources for Open Educational Resources and any highly useful specific OERs identified. We will also provide a brief overview of open source tools related to citation management.
Conclusion: Come to this presentation to explore the Open Education movement: hear about one research university library system's start with Open Education Week, and get an overview of free, online options for high quality Open Educational Resources in the Health Sciences.
As health information professionals we are familiar with specialized resources such as PubMed and CINAHL but less familiar with general freely available tools such as Google, Google Scholar, and other open Google tools. We wondered:
1. What Google tools are Health Sciences Researchers and Healthcare Professionals using, and how are they using them?
2. How effective are Google and/or Google Scholar for literature searching?
3. What other research is needed in this area?
Methods:
We searched for: ‘Google’ across five health sciences and health sciences related databases (CINAHL, Cochrane, PsycInfo, PubMed, Web of Science) and in Google Scholar (*For Google Scholar we searched: health AND google). We reviewed the first 100 citations from each database and selected results that: 1. Mentioned use of a Google tool, or 2. Discussed the effectiveness of Google or Google Scholar in scholarly literature searching. Out of the second group, we selected and read the 10 most relevant articles discussing the effectiveness of Google and/or Google Scholar for literature searching. We tried out recommended best practices to search for topics we had previously searched only in subject specific databases.
Results:
Health Sciences Researchers and Healthcare Professionals use many Google tools for a variety of purposes. Each tool was used in different ways by authors writing in the Health Sciences (see pie charts and examples in poster). Regarding literature searching the poster includes Google Scholar content sources, Top Search Strategies for Google Scholar, and Considerations for using Google Scholar for literature searching.
Conclusions:
Health Science researchers use a variety of Google tools to gather and manipulate data, and to visualize and disseminate results. Health care professionals use Google tools to facilitate interventions and for interactive educational materials. For Literature searching our results encourage using Google Scholar to complement subject specific databases. Its unique content makes it a valuable resource for finding additional documents.
Sequencing library modules over the course of multiple semesters allowed students to build upon core knowledge that is necessary to successfully complete increasingly advanced assignments and gain research skills that can be applied in their future careers as nurses.
Originally developed for medicine and related fields in support of evidence-based practice, systematic reviews (SRs) are now published in other fields. We investigated non-health sciences disciplines that are publishing systematic reviews.
Research questions:
“What disciplines outside the health sciences are adopting systematic reviews?”
“How do systematic reviews outside the health sciences compare with health sciences systematic reviews?”
Methods:
We conducted a search in the Scopus database for articles with the phrase “systematic review*” in the title or abstract. We limited our results to review articles, and eliminated health science focused articles using the Scopus Subject area categories. Articles were examined by reviewers to determine if they a) were classified as SRs by the authors b) exhibited accepted characteristics of systematic reviews, such as a comprehensive search, adherence to a predetermined protocol, and assessment of bias and quality, and c) addressed a non-health sciences topic. We eliminated articles based on 1) title, 2) abstract, and finally 3) the full text of each article. We reconciled differences for articles on which there was not initial consensus, and grouped remaining articles according to Scopus subject areas.
Discussion:
We found a significant number of systematic reviews outside the health science disciplines, particularly in the physical and social sciences. We compared similarities as well as differences to the protocols and processes used in health sciences systematic reviews. These findings have implications for librarians both inside and outside the health sciences arena who participate in systematic review projects.