Article type
Abstract
Background: Academic health librarians play vital roles in instructing evidence synthesis (ES) search skills and meeting the rising demand to support student ES projects through online instruction to groups and individuals. Early student consultations empower librarians to align methodological choices with research questions, potentially mitigating research waste. However, the landscape of librarians’ online teaching practices for ES instruction remains largely unexplored, necessitating an investigation into the organizational, technological, pedagogical, and methodological aspects of online teaching practices.
Objectives: This study seeks to untangle the complexities of online teaching practices related to ES methods, spotlighting diverse strategies employed by librarians to engage learners and leverage technology in ES research production. Objectives include understanding the entanglements of human, nonhuman, material, and immaterial factors in online teaching practices to aid librarians and others in developing ES methods training.
Methods: Employing sociomaterial theories and a digitally mediated ethnographic approach, the study engaged 11 academic health librarians through 2 focus groups, 8 observations of online research consultations, and 5 interviews. Analysis centered on tracing assemblages and disruptions and building relational understandings of the entanglements of technologies, texts, methods guidance, and research expectations in online teaching practices.
Results: Librarians' online teaching practices are shaped by digital learning resources like video tutorials, online library guides, electronic ES methods guidance texts, and emerging review-related technologies. They dynamically adapt teaching approaches, balancing technical and conceptual learning objectives to address the interconnected steps of ES methods. Various technologies are employed both during the online training and throughout the review process to teach searching, question formulation, and other skills.
Conclusions: Findings underscore important considerations of how technologies, techniques, methods content, and training formats influence online ES methods instruction. A proposed model elucidates contributing factors and relationships, explicitly addressing the often-invisible labor in teaching ES methods, with implications for workload in ES research capacity building. Beyond enhancing our understanding of librarian teaching practices in the digital realm, this framework extends to various instructors engaged in online teaching of ES methods. The research's impact on patient care lies in enhancing capacity for methodologically sound ES research addressing relevant and timely questions for clinical and health systems decision-making.
Objectives: This study seeks to untangle the complexities of online teaching practices related to ES methods, spotlighting diverse strategies employed by librarians to engage learners and leverage technology in ES research production. Objectives include understanding the entanglements of human, nonhuman, material, and immaterial factors in online teaching practices to aid librarians and others in developing ES methods training.
Methods: Employing sociomaterial theories and a digitally mediated ethnographic approach, the study engaged 11 academic health librarians through 2 focus groups, 8 observations of online research consultations, and 5 interviews. Analysis centered on tracing assemblages and disruptions and building relational understandings of the entanglements of technologies, texts, methods guidance, and research expectations in online teaching practices.
Results: Librarians' online teaching practices are shaped by digital learning resources like video tutorials, online library guides, electronic ES methods guidance texts, and emerging review-related technologies. They dynamically adapt teaching approaches, balancing technical and conceptual learning objectives to address the interconnected steps of ES methods. Various technologies are employed both during the online training and throughout the review process to teach searching, question formulation, and other skills.
Conclusions: Findings underscore important considerations of how technologies, techniques, methods content, and training formats influence online ES methods instruction. A proposed model elucidates contributing factors and relationships, explicitly addressing the often-invisible labor in teaching ES methods, with implications for workload in ES research capacity building. Beyond enhancing our understanding of librarian teaching practices in the digital realm, this framework extends to various instructors engaged in online teaching of ES methods. The research's impact on patient care lies in enhancing capacity for methodologically sound ES research addressing relevant and timely questions for clinical and health systems decision-making.