ABSTRACT

A primary role of community health nursing education is to prepare students to be life long learners. That necessitates that they have the ability to obtain, evaluate, and utilize information from many sources; much of which is now found in electronic formats. For nurses practicing in community settings the need to quickly and efficiently maneuver through the shear volume of information has never been greater. The skill necessary to manage web-based information is however, often overlooked when planning community health nursing education programs. In an effort to build information literacy competency in the nursing education program at California State University, Sacramento a collaborative effort between nursing, physical therapy, and librarians was initiated. Through this collaborative a series of academic assignments were developed to provide students with progressively more challenging web-based activities. These activities were designed to prepare them to not only locate needed information, but to do so efficiently and to have the skill mix necessary to effectively utilize the information obtained. The initial assignments were developed for lower division nursing students as a means to not only prepare the students but to allow the faculty the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the assignments. The culminating experience was a web-based assignment for the students enrolled in community health nursing. Based on the previous assignments, these students were guided through the process of locating, evaluating, and utilizing information pertinent to community health nursing practice. With other web-based assignments there has been an assumption of competency from the outset; often leading to frustration by many of the students, especially RN/BSN students. With this project, skill at locating information was not assumed rather it was designed such that those proficient with computers and web searches could more quickly complete at least the initial portion of the assignment. The ultimate goal of this assignment was to provide a mechanism for students to learn or refresh web-based skills and then to apply critical thinking to the evaluation and utilization phases of the assignment. This project was seen as an initial step to integrating information competency throughout the nursing program. The final results of these efforts will serve as a template for providing guidance to other faculty seeking to enhance student learning through web-based mechanisms.