This article covers the main content of Helping Students in Evidence Based Projects presentation held as part of Health Education Without Borders: Innovation Through Collaboration conference in Maputo, Mozambique, Thu 10th of April.

Aims of the Future Health Hub Project

One aim of the Future Health Hub (FHH) project has been to promote evidence based practices (EBP) as part of internships, including joint projects carried out by Savonia and ISCISA students. Finding reliable information is a crucial part of this and an information specialist from Savonia’s library has helped students’ information seeking in both family coaching pilots, one in Savonia, one in ISCISA. The goal is that students use especially open access materials (OA) when preparing themselves for their training, making guidance materials etc.

Why Emphasize Open Access Materials?

Conference presentation Helping students in evidence-based projects summarized what has been done so far. First, the aims mentioned earlier were presented. It was also opened up why it was chosen to emphasize open access materials in FHH. The goal was to promote OA materials in general and tell students how they have access to reliable information, even after graduation although licenced materials might not be available.

Information Retrieval Teaching in Savonia and ISCISA

As background information, the audience was told how information retrieval teaching has been organized in our universities before and what new has been done. For example, In Savonia, information skills training has been integrated in larger courses for years in different stages of studies. In FHH project, emphasis on OA materials and linking guidance to students’ internships were introduced. Usually, information retrieval teaching has been part of more theoretical studies.

EBP and OA Module in Edunia Platform

After this we went through in title level the content of Information retrieval: EBP and Open Access Materials module in Edunia platform. The platform includes Introduction to EBP and OA, after which follows sections How to find high quality material? – Tips for information seeking, Open Access Databases, Open Access Books, E-Journals, Theses, WHO – useful web pages and other resources – translators, AI and open science and learning. The links which are in module have been collected to PowerPoint presentation as well.

Guidance Sessions in Kuopio and Maputo

The students in pilots had access to all the materials via Edunia. In addition, an information specialist of Savonia had a face-to-face guidance session with students in Kuopio and in Maputo. In Savonia, five students were present (three from Savonia, two from ISCISA). In Maputo, three Savonia students were present via Zoom. When we met, we talked about students’ information needs, useful materials were demonstrated, good search terms were discussed and concrete information seeking began. Afterwards, feedback was asked from Savonia students.

Student Feedback and Experiences

Students were quite happy with the information retrieval section in Edunia. When asked about understanding the benefits of using open access materials, students said they understood it. Session with information specialist in the beginning of information seeking had mainly been found useful. The most used information source was Pubmed. In Kuopio, even licenced materials were used for family coaching session planning. In Maputo, only open access materials were used.

Ideas for Further Development

The students had also some ideas for development. Students in Maputo mentioned that it would be useful to know more about families before the information seeking session. This way they could restrict their searches to the needs of certain families. The other issue was that next time’s online session should be organized in a way that both ISCISA and Savonia students could be present. This will be arranged if possible. From ISCISA students we got feedback in conference when they told us about their time in Savonia and mentioned even information seeking as useful experience.

Work continues and all the things done until now and ideas for development will be taken into account when planning the future.

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Author: Tanja Savolainen, Information Specialist in the library of Savonia, tanja.savolainen@savonia.fi

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“This article is part of the presentations related to the Future Health HUB and Erasmus+ SA-IS projects, delivered at the Health Education Without Borders: Innovation Through Collaboration conference held in Maputo on April 10, 2025. An overview of the conference and the projects presented is provided in the main article Health Education Without Borders: Innovation Through Collaboration -International Conference in Maputo – April 10, 2025”