NICE Evidence Search: Student Peers' Views on their Involvement as Trainers in Peer-based Information Literacy Training

Abstract

This research seeks to contribute to understanding of peer-based models of information literacy training, through gathering insights from peer trainers (champions) in a scheme designed to promote the use of a national health and social care information portal, Evidence Search (ES), amongst university students in mainly in the health professions. Specifically, this article focuses on the benefits and learning that the peer trainers derive from their involvement in the scheme. This article reports on focus groups conducted with student champions. Findings suggest that champions believe that they have learnt a lot about information searching and evaluation from their engagement as champions, as well as developing their teaching, planning and organisational skills. They now reported using Evidence Search as a first port-of-call for information for an assignment, although they still used Google. Students' choice of queries for their training session was influenced by their recent experience with study units or placements. In addition, many acted as advocates, making recommendations to friends (for study) or colleagues (in practice settings). Questionnaire data showed that champions regarded Evidence Search as credible, trustworthy and reliable, and that their approach to searching for and evaluating information is that of an expert.

Peer teaching and information retrieval: the role of the NICE Evidence search student champion scheme in enhancing students’ confidence

“…The student learners have also expressed the view that ES is not only significantly useful for their course of study, but the relevance of the resource keeps growing with time, possibly due to the increased users’ familiarity with it (Garcia‐Marques, Prada & Mackie, ). This is in agreement with preliminary studies conducted on the impact of NICE Evidence search (Rowley et al., ; Sbaffi et al., ). This finding is also supported by the responses provided regarding the main reasons for using NICE ES.…”

“…The present study is the first to report on the full scale implementation of the scheme and to include qualitative data from students undertaking the training sessions with champions. The results indicated that, consistently with previous evaluations conducted on the programme (Rees et al., ; Rowley et al., ; Sbaffi et al., ), there are objective advantages from participating to the NICE SCS. The most significant result of this study is the consistent improvement in search confidence that students experience after attending the peer taught training session.…”

“…That NICE Evidence search is indeed a useful resource has further been confirmed by the thematic analysis of the open ended question in the post‐training survey, which showed that ‘usefulness’ was the prominent characteristic of ES, mentioned at least by one every four participants to the training. The inclusion of trained students’ views is a novel aspect of research conducted on the SCS as previous studies using qualitative data have discussed the benefits for student champions only (Rowley et al., ; Sbaffi et al., ).…”

“…In addition, Rowley et al (2015) showed similar results by looking at the first two years of the scheme, but across a fairly limited number of institutions. The study by Sbaffi et al (2015) also reported on benefits of the scheme, but from the viewpoint of the student champions only who, as a result of their tailored NICE training, developed a more critical approach to health care information searching. Hence, this research expands of the preceding ones and allows for a systematic generalisation of the findings.…”

“…Rees et al (2014) have discussed how peer teaching has proved beneficial for an effective delivery of evidence based medicine in one UK medical school. Their study, together with Rowley, Johnson, Sbaffi and Weist (2015) and Sbaffi, Johnson, Griffith, Rowley and Weist (2015), is the only literature available on peer teaching of evidence based practice for undergraduate students, and all of them report the NICE student champion scheme as key example, highlighting a gap in the knowledge. This is also in agreement with Maggio, Tannery, Che, Cate and O'Brien (2013), who reported on a number of methodologies used in higher education to train students in EBP, including using physicians and librarians as instructors, or allied health professionals and faculty from different disciplines, but not peer teaching.…”