Policies

Instruction Policy

Introduction

  • Mission Statement
    The George T. Harrell Health Sciences Library is central to the provision of biomedical information resources and expertise in support of the education, research, patient care, and community outreach missions of the Penn State Hershey College of Medicine and the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.  The library creates and sustains a stimulating learning environment for the students, staff, faculty, and patients by providing high quality services, facilities and information resources in all formats.
  • Purpose
    The Library supports the needs of students, faculty, and staff of the Penn State Hershey Campus.  The Library Instruction Program coordinates instructional activities, workshops, assessments, and statistics.  This includes collaborating with other faculty to develop the curricula, offering continuing education credit for library classes, and providing course integrated instruction.  The Instruction Program identifies and evaluates existing tutorials for inclusion in the library’s Website and creates online library tutorials.  The program is responsible for pursuing alternative funding sources for educational projects.
  • Goals
    1. Integrate library resource into the medical and nursing curriculum
    2. Provide library classes related to library e-resources and services.
    3. Collect and analyze statistical data about the instruction programs.
    4. Evaluate effectiveness of instruction activities for the purpose of improving programs.
    5. Provide classes for library faculty and staff for the purpose of staff development.
    6. Identify and create online tutorials.
    7. Procure alternative funding for special instruction programs.

Integration into the medical and nursing curriculum

  • Medical curriculum
    Work with the Associate Dean for Pre-clinical Curriculum, for integration in years one and two; work with the Associate Dean Clinical Education, for integration into the medical curriculum year three.
    1. CMBMP 711 first year/first semester – PubMed & graded clinical scenario search assignment
    2. EBM 713 first year/second semester – EBM resources & graded clinical scenario search assignment
    3. BBD – first year/second semester – OVID & graded clinical scenario search assignment
    4. EBM 723 – second year/first semester – EBM resource flowchart & graded video clinical scenario search assignment
    5. Renal - EBM resources flowchart & graded video clinical scenario search assignment
    6. Reproductive Medicine - EBM resources flowchart & graded video clinical scenario search assignment
    7. Third year activities – EBM assignments
    8. Fourth year activity – EBM assignment
  • Nursing curriculum
    Work with the head of the Penn State Hershey Nursing Program for undergraduate and graduate education.
    • N200W – Nursing Research, undergraduate junior & senior nursing students
      • PubMed/CINAHL
      • Evidence Based Practice
    • N512 – Nursing Research, graduate program
  • Graduate curriculum
    Work with the course director for “Finding and Reading the Scientific Literature”

Library Classes

  • Creation – education team discusses creation of new classes.  Instruction librarian or other interested librarian will teach the class.  Classes are typically one hour in duration.  Special workshops may be created that are longer in duration.
  • Registration – is recommended and accomplished via library web site.  Instruction librarian check registration on library web site then downloads registration to MS Excel spreadsheets and distributes to class instructor.
  • Orientation.  This occurs biweekly.  Notification is through Nursing Administration.
  • Notification – Instruction librarian sends list of attendees to Head of circulation.  Head of circulation sends email reminder to attendees two days before class.
  • Individual cancellation notification will be sent to the class instructor.  If there are individuals scheduled for the class but none arrive the instructor will wait 15 minutes before leaving.
  • Instruction Librarian also participates in Medical, Graduate, and Nursing student orientation.
  • Instruction Librarian provides new nursing employees with a 15 minute library

Collection of Instruction Data

  • Each course has an online survey.  After each class students are asked to complete the survey.  The results are emailed to the Instruction Librarian.  The Instruction Librarian distributes to the class instructor.
  • Classes taught, attendees, duration, and instructor information is collected.
  • Data is collected on monthly basis and entered into the statistics database.  The statistics reside on the library intranet site.
  • Annual statistics are sent to the Reference Librarian for AAHSL and ARL.

Evaluation of Instruction Programs

  • Instruction statistics are used to evaluate library classes.
  • The Education Team (all librarians, head of circulation, and the medical education instructional designer) led by the Instruction Librarian reviews the statistical data and makes decisions about the program (e.g. course integration, library classes, delivery modality).

Faculty & Staff Development
The instruction program supports the library faculty and staff by offering various staff development programs.

  • Brunch & Learn – is held on a quarterly basis.  Topics are based on learning needs at the time.  The duration can be one hour or ninety minutes.  The Instruction Librarian coordinates the programs.
  • The Instruction Librarian is responsible for identifying and coordinating other programs of interest.

Online Tutorials

  • Instruction Librarian maintains the links to tutorials on the library web site
  • Instruction Librarian evaluates and creates new tutorials for inclusion on the library web site

Alternative Funding

  • Instruction Librarian seeks and procures alternative funding for instruction projects.