To add to the discussion:
Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and
Biomedical Sciences (GKT) together with Schools of Nursing and Midwifery
and Health and Life Sciences have a well developed and utilised
programme of user education.
Customised training is offered for individuals and groups of
undergraduates, postgraduates, research and NHS staff. Users can either
sign up for a rolling training programme of hands-on practicals
held in dedicated training facilities in Campus Information Service
Centres, or can request customised, subject-focused information retrieval
and management training delivered in their departments.
Information Specialists, comprising converged Library & Information
Services and Computing & IT staff, are responsible for keeping up to date
with the strategic and operational learning, teaching, research and IT
requirements of the Schools that comprise GKT. Through liaison on
curricular development committees and other appropriate bodies, the
Information Specialists are well placed to deliver focused and pertinent
teaching that supports School activity.
Programmes are designed for small, medium and large groups backed up by
powerpoint presentations and extensive doumentation and workbooks. There
are basic and advanced sessions covering everything from publication
patterns, internet searching, the range of resources, effective
resource selection, query formulation, information quality and
post-processing of results. Sessions are advertised on the WWW.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/medlib
Users are also notifed of sessions via email and heads of departments are
actively encouraged to timetable staff for special teaching in this area.
These teams have helped place the importance of effective information
skills on the curricular agenda at the Schools they support. Information
retrieval skills are currently taught and assessed in the first year
medical curriculum, and it is planned to extend this to other
disciplines - discussions are taking place with other Schools to
introduce this. It does ensure that students attend and become skilled
information users and it also ensures that all students acquire early
on roughly similar experiences of IT and information skills. It is
crucial that those who arrive at university from less afluent
backgrounds are brought up-to-speed early on and don't lag further and
further behind.
In order to ensure that all staff are involved in the important area of
user education, other library and computing staff help with the delivery
of these courses at the moment and, after the flurry of the start of
session has died down, they will be involved in the planning stages in
future.
Felicity Grainger
____________________________________________
Dr Felicity Grainger
>From 1 August 1999:
Assistant Director of ISS, King's College London
(Focused Services) - Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Health and Life
and Biomedical Sciences and Nursing and Midwifery
Information Services Centre
New Hunt's House
Guy's Campus
Tel: 0171 848 6748
FAX: 0171-848-6743
email: [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|