Use of libguides as a student engagement and research tool in public health research: A southern experience

Background: In the current era of social media and information overload, it is imperative to have librarian assistance for public health faculty to build and deliver student engaging public health education courses. Faculty-librarian collaboration in developing health education research guides assist students not only in enhancing their public health knowledge but also reduces their anxiety related to navigating through a public health education related research project. LibGuides provide focus on specific books, journal articles, public health data, and credible internet resources and offer convenience and accessibility to distance-learning and web-enhanced classes. Purpose: The purpose of the current presentation is to assess the use of LibGuides in enhancing student learning and research experiences in public health education courses. Methods: The cross-sectional quantitative survey study was designed to gather data about student satisfaction with faculty-librarian collaboration and usefulness of LibGuides as a teaching tool using survey monkey. Results: Some of the salient features were: majority of participants (92.9%) were full-time, female; off-campus residing students who indicated that the Libguide assisted in providing access to variety of resources related to their public health interest topics (85.7%) and improved the research process (71.4%). Furthermore, majority (42.9%) said that they used it close to five times in a semester. Discussion & Conclusions: A positive feedback provided by students indicated the usefulness of the LibGuide in student learning and designing of public health research projects. Faculty reported higher quality of assignments, better utilization of APA style for writing, as well as quality references supporting the assignments.