An opportunity to further develop systematic information search skills, information analysis and reporting skills, and program evaluation knowledge.

Western Nova Scotia’s District Health Authorities have taken a centralized approach to e-learning module development since 2002.  The Library, Knowledge and Research Services Department’s work as presented in September 2006 led to the provincial health Medworxx learning management system (LMS) https://elearning.nshealth.ca/ being established.  Although the Department has one of the few especially trained e-learning technicians on staff in Nova Scotia’s health system, and our modules are in use throughout the province, the service currently lacks an evaluation plan.

 

At this time, we need a review of research related to workplace e-learning outcomes and LMS management standards to inform design of a service evaluation framework.

The student will prepare a syllabus and then take a stepwise planned approach to:

1. Self-directed reading maintaining an annotated list of completed readings
2. Conducting a systematic search of the research literature related to workplace e-learning and learning management systems. The search will follow methods as described in Booth et al. (2012). Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review.  These will include:
3. Examine search results to identify outcomes and standards.
4. Use SharePoint 2010 to prepare information for framework synthesis by extracting data to a SharePoint List or Library so that it can be viewed as a side-by-side comparison table.
5. Summarize reading course work as an academic poster.

• The framed search question
• The mapped concept(s) associated with the search questions
• A scoping search report to include charts describing publication timeline and size of the literature by subject domain
• Searches of up to four sources, including commercial databases and grey literature resources
• Documentation of search methods
• Search results organized within a Refworks Refshare folder

 

This reading course will allow a student to apply and further develop skills gained in INFO 5515 Organization of Information, INFO 5530 Information Sources and Retrieval and INFO 6730 Records Management.  These include:

• Client engagement
• SharePoint 2010 and reference management software
• Health databases, library and information science databases, grey literature.

 

Please refer to MLIS Reading Courses: Policy and Procedures (INFO 6700/6710) http://sim.management.dal.ca/Courses/MLIS%20Courses%20Offered/Reading_Courses.php, then contact Dr. Jacqueline MacDonald: jacqueline.macdonald@dal.ca for more information