The sixth in a series of 6 courses, students focus on the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Plan involving prescription medications, patient history, and more complex patient cases. The librarian has already met with these students in other courses so this is and scaffolded approach with this being their last session with the librarian. The purpose of the librarian session is to make sure they feel comfortable doing advanced research on drug information pertaining to specific topics that will be communicated to patients. In a previous session the librarian covered disparities and discrimination in both search engines and scholarly databases so this is to reinforce those lessons. The session starts with a brief Kahoot quiz (with prizes for winners) and discussion of any sticking points that become clear through this quiz. This is to allow students to teach and learn from each other and to assess their needs as opposed to assuming what they might be needing reinforcement on. Then the students break out into groups to create a patient education zine on smoking cessation for members of the LGBTQ2S+ communities. The zine has to have at least 2 background sources, 1 scholarly article, and 1 drug information portal source. All sources have to be cited in correct APA format. There also has to be at least one page where the group communicates to the patients how they found this information (in otherwords their search strategy). At the end of the class there is about 20 minutes set aside for the groups to present on their zines, what information they included, and why. The librarian makes copies of the zines for all members of the class afterwards, thus helping to build intrinsic motivation for sharing with their cohorts. The librarian for this course pre-makes the zine booklets and brings all supplies for making zines (such as markers, glue sticks, scissors, paper, magazines to cut up, etc.)

Description: The Database Scavenger Hunt engages pairs of students in locating specific information or performing specific tasks across multiple resources. Each team works through a series of 16 questions/tasks, with verification of correct answers from the librarian/professor after every 1 or 2 questions, then places a mark on the corresponding wall grid of questions once an answer is deemed correct. The process repeats until the team completes all questions.

The wall grid acts as a way to track where teams are in the game and creates a light-weight race to finish first. (Optional: provide a small prize to either the first team to finish or do a drawing of all teams that finished to give out a prize). See image below of completed wall-grid, with each color/shape of sticky note representing a different team.

Verifying answers after each/every 2 questions ensures students are finding the correct information and completing the tasks. Once a majority of teams complete all 16 questions, there is a group discussion of difficult questions and demoing of any specific problem areas. Before the activity begins, the librarian/instructor can demo where to find databases & database descriptions on the library webpage and mention how to log in. 

Questions can be customized to match the class/subject area. The example attached below is for an undergraduate research group. Examples of changes include: switching databases & examples, focusing on different types of information (patents, standards, handbooks, webpages, etc.), changing tasks based on assignment needs, etc.

Note: Because of the verification step, this activity is best with groups of 20 or less and with the assistance of either the professor or another colleague. 

Materials Needed:

• Question sheet for each student
• Answer sheet for each librarian/professor/instructor
• Wall grid, cut into half-size pages
• Sticky notes (or some method of distinguishing team marks on grid)
• Tape to adhere grid to wall
• Prize (optional)

In this scenario based activity, students are asked to help 3 of their classmates narrow down their topics. By moving a series of sliders, students aim to develop a research question that is interesting, yet narrow enough to find scholarly sources.

Embedded library modules in online, stand-alone website used by second semester English Composition classes for freshman level students.  This set of modules is co-authored with Mario Leyva, Assistant Director, Instruction and User Services at Our Lady of the Lake University, and Forrest Davidson. All coursework and assignments are available for download; quizzes available upon request.

Use this virtual mind-map to focus a topic and generate keywords for searching.

Learn how to read a scholarly article and identify the parts.

Understand the difference between primary and secondary sources, and between popular and scholarly sources.

This scaffolded assignment was developed for senior Dietetic students enrolled in a research methods course. The lessons were collaboratively created via a librarian-faculty partnership.

This is session 1 of 3 sessions that I do for Introduction to Evidence Based Medicine in Pharmacy. For this session I had about an hour so the majority of the session is group work. Included are the materials to build the activity, an overview of the lesson (since so much was group work, I wouldn't call it a lesson plan), and the rubric for assessing /grading the activity. This was designed for Zoom/online synchronous teaching. A guide was created to assist with the work in the class (with links to all class activities) and be a place for students to refer back to later. Some content in this guide was hidden until they completed their work for each session (since to help with metacognition the examples on the guide are the same as what they worked through in the sessions).