An ILG funded research project, Facilitating Research amongst Radiographers through Information Literacy Workshops, has been completed and the resources created by Emily Hurt and Alison McLoughlin from Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are now ready to share.
The project came about as Emily and Alison wanted a way to move research engagement forward in the Trust with specific groups of staff. They worked with Radiographers and delivered a set of six workshops, using the Information Literacy Self Efficacy Scale (ILSES) as an outcome measure before and after the workshops were delivered. All participants who completed pre and post ILSES had an increased score.
The lesson plans and handouts that were created as part of the project are now available from the project website. Part of the ethos of the project was to ‘do once and share’, meaning that other information professionals wanting to run similar sessions in a healthcare setting could use the material as templates rather than starting from scratch.
As the project will be ongoing, new session plans and learning materials will be added to the website as they are created. A set of detailed accompanying guides to each session will be developed, giving context and background for anyone wanting to take the sessions and deliver them in their own organisation.
The project has now been re-branded the ‘Research Engagement Programme’, and Emily and Alison are in the process of identifying a new professional group within the Trust to work with. They have presented at numerous conferences (including LILAC in April 2017) and the full findings will be published in a journal article in 2018. The project was nominated for a Sally Hernando Innovation award and has made it to the final shortlist of ten – winners will be announced in Libraries Week in early October.
They both wanted to thank ILG for their financial support:
‘Without the funding from ILG we would have struggled to get this project off the ground. The bursary helped us fund extra staff hours to dedicate to the project and was essential for our dissemination strategy, paying conference fees and associated costs. The application process was really straightforward and the ILG team were very supportive.’ (Emily Hurt)
Check out this video for more information and feedback from the project stakeholders.