Authors: Roberta Bronson Fitzpatrick, Margaret Rush Dreker
Objectives
A poster describing a CAT-writing project was presented at the Rutgers University “State of the Libraries” meeting in 2014. It gained the attention of the Chancellor. At the conclusion of the discussion, he urged that transferrable concepts be taught to other RU librarians and incorporated within their instructional programs. A workshop was designed and presented in June and November 2015.
Methods
Specific elements of the CATs sessions were deemed to be transferrable to those providing instruction to students in the sciences and social sciences, as well as education and other disciplines. These include: foreground/background questions; writing a focused question; breaking a search question into the PICO format to assist with term generation, and the evidence pyramid. The workshop covered the CATs project as an example of a type of complete assessment, in that students must use the component skills to write their own CAT (Critically-Appraised Topic). Each of the noted transferrable concepts was covered. Attendees had time to come up with an example which would fit their subject audience and there a general discussion portion where ideas were exchanged on how to best incorporate these new skills into instructional programs.
Results
The workshops resulted in offers to teach collaboratively outside of our home campus. All attendees identified concepts which could be used directly so slightly modified to fit various disciplines. For example, article types listed in the evidence pyramid did not fit every discipline but librarians considered other types of resources, such as dissertations/theses and web sites/pages were listed in this format.
Conclusions
Rutgers University had few health sciences programs prior to 2013. Teaching the workshops was a good vehicle for informing our new colleagues about how instructional sessions are approached in the health sciences. It also allowed us to become part of the cadre of instructors and to be invited to attend meetings which focus on curriculum development and instructional techniques.
