Engaging Pre-College Students in Health Sciences Research

Abstract

Objective: This presentation will show how to engage, assess, and educate pre-college students in a pipeline program in-person and online.Methods: The pipeline program targets juniors and seniors from local high schools who are interested in pursuing a health sciences career. This summer long program provides credit and non-credit instruction courses modelled after medical education programs to simulate what the students will experience in higher education. Part of the non-credit instruction is an information literacy course that is taught by two librarians from the health sciences library. This course focuses on introductory information search skills, health sciences specific databases, and indexing. Many of the students begin the course without previous health literacy skills but are expected to write and present on a health disparities topic by the end of the nine-week program. The Information Literacy course is presented to both in-person and online groups and were initially taught simultaneously for convenience and consistency. The two groups were split in Summer of 2017 due to ongoing technical difficulties, student engagement concerns, and poor student comprehension. Results: By focusing on the in-person and online groups separately, the librarians were able to better utilize group discussion and online tools to increase student participation. The immediate result of separating the class components was a reduction in wasted class time for the in-person instruction waiting for online students to login and respond. Additionally, tools such as online discussion boards and surveys, were better utilized to engage distance students. Conclusions: Separating the class component saw an increase in the student engagement over the course of the summer and allowed for better assessment of student comprehension through pre and post testing. Additional conclusions from the Summer 2018 will be included.