Me amongst the orchids in Durham

I liked the idea underlying this tool presented by Sue David and Judith Scammell of St George’s University, London. They were looking for a way to improve IL skills of second year medical students and decided to use an online self assessment tool. followed up with optional tutorials. The tool creates a medical scenario; students have to navigate a critical path through it by answering questions relating to various types of information needed. Because it relates to a real world situation, it’s very relevant and gives students formative feedback to help them learn. This works very well for a subject like medicine, in which students can perceive a need for finding this kind of information after they graduate too. If they identify a specific need, they can sign up for more in depth workshops relating to information skills. The takeup has been disappointingly small so far, as with any task which doesn’t carry marks and as the participants have been anonymous, it’s not been possible to track the impact of the exercise, which might have helped with selling it. However, there are plans to change this in future. You can view the tutorial here