| Description |
- Background:
Self-directed learning (SDL) experiences are required for institutional accreditation of medical schools by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). To meet LCME standards, SDL experiences must include four components: identification of learning need; retrieval, analysis, and synthesis of information; appraisal of sources; and feedback from instructors. SDL is aligned with skills taught by librarians, including information literacy and evidence-based medicine, and those taught by basic and clinical science faculty, including critical thinking and constructing foundational medical knowledge. To leverage disciplinary expertise, librarians and faculty must collaborate. This paper will describe the collaborative development of a curricular thread for teaching and assessing medical students' SDL skills in the preclinical curriculum.
Description:
While the institution's curriculum already included several librarian-led sessions on information literacy and a required course on evidence-based medicine (EBM) co-directed by a librarian, there was not an explicit SDL assignment. To address this gap, librarians partnered with faculty to develop a deliberate, progressive, and clearly labeled set of SDL activities for first year medical students. Three learning activities were created across different domains: foundational medical knowledge, critical reflection, and clinical information needs. Each activity utilized an SDL activity as a pass/fail meta-cognitive assignment paired to an existing assignment. In each assignment, students were required to identify a learning need related to completing the original assignment, to select a relevant source, to evaluate the source, and to analyze the information retrieved. All students completed and received credit for the assignments. Assignments demonstrated student information seeking and evaluation skills at three distinct time points and in three different domains. Librarians provided feedback directly to students for the critical reflection and clinical information assignments and provided a rubric for faculty feedback on the foundational medical knowledge assignment.
Conclusion:
Student responses highlighted information literacy skills that range beyond EBM (e.g., PICO, searching, and appraisal), including author voice, conflicts of interest, and the role of geography and power in research. Librarians gained a deeper understanding of student skills in information literacy and appraisal; and faculty gained a deeper understanding of source selection and evaluation. Librarians were also granted additional teaching time in busy curricula to ensure student preparation for these assignments. Healthcare providers increasingly must navigate misinformation and potentially biased information from artificial intelligence, flawed research, or faulty sources. Accreditation requirements for self-directed learning can enable librarians to expand existing information literacy teaching and evaluation to address these needs.
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