Information skills training

This session is ideal for beginners of literature searching as well as those in need of a refresher. It covers everything you need to start putting your search together, from different searching techniques, to a look at a variety of online resources available to you using your NHS OpenAthens password.

Basic IT skills are essential to attend this session.

Session lasts 2 hours.

• Wednesday 24th March                    14.00-16.00

This hands on session leading on from How to find information will aid you to find the evidence you need to support your research or for patient care. It covers a look at the hierarchy of evidence as well as searching for Cochrane systematic reviews, guidelines, randomised control trials and patient pathways.

Basic IT skills are essential to attend this session

Session last 2 hours.

Are you finding it hard to find relevant, recent and high quality information? This course will show you how to use databases such as Medline, CINAHL and EMBASE to search for articles, as well as showing you how to use your OpenAthens ID to access and download articles. It will also demonstrate how you can place alerts to notify you when new content is added which matches your search criteria.

Basic IT skills are essential to attend this session

Session lasts 2 hours. 

• Friday 12th March                                        10.00-12.00

There will be the opportunity at the end of these sessions should you wish to practice what you have learnt or conduct your own search. 

Suitable for anyone who is studying, writing or doing research and needs to have a basic understanding of how to reference and to avoid plagiarism.

This session includes a look at some of the different referencing styles used and what information you need to collect for your references

Session 45 minutes

Basic IT skills are essential to attend this session

Suitable for anyone who is studying, writing a paper or doing research and needs to manage their  references.

This session includes a look at some examples of bibliographic management software available with practical sessions on how to use it including creating a bibliography and cite while you write and peer sharing your references.

Session lasts 1 hour.

                                                                             Basic - Level one

• How good is the research?  
• How evidence based is a paper?  
• How do you assess the evidence?
• Is the research valid?
• Is the research reliable?

If you are a beginner at critical appraisal or just need a refresher this session will give you an introduction to the basics. During the session we will look at some journal articles to assess their validity, results and relevance. 

Sessions last three hours.

Find out about some of the statistical methods you will come across when reading a journal article or report. These include distribution, types of data, p-values, confidence intervals, measures of effect, probability, statistical tests and forest plots. 

Attendees should all ready have attended the module 6 session or have a firm knowledge of critical appraisal.

Session lasts 2 hours

• Wednesday 24th March                                  09.30-11.30

Do you already have some experience of critical appraisal but want to expand your knowledge?

A look at what systematic reviews are and why you need to appraise them?

During the session you will use a checklist to appraise a systematic review to assess its validity and relevance.

Session lasts 2 hours

Find out about the methodology and terminology of qualitative studies and why it’s important to appraise them. During the session you will gain hands on experience of appraising a qualitative study to assess its validity and relevance.

Session lasts 2 hours.

Tuesday 16th March 2020                     09.30-12.30