Inside this Issue
Director's Update
Greetings and welcome to the first online edition of the Public Health Library & Informatics Newsletter. We have many new projects and initiatives underway.
We are making exciting and significant strides in online learning through the work of the Informatics Division. We have defined the following core service areas: 1) Training, instruction & informatics curriculum support; 2) eLearning and distance education; 3) Instructional technology; 4) Web services; 5) Research and grants support; and 6) Outreach. We are developing training resources in support of the School's degree programs, non-degree programs, the overall curriculum, and outreach to the community.
Working with faculty in Health Management & Policy (HMP) and with a well-equipped lab of video production resources and an eLearning Specialist on board, we have created a distance education and learning environment complete with faculty lecture series and other curriculum support materials. The new learning environment also features web conferencing and uses online testing and evaluation components. The learning modules will be made accessible via a Rich Media Library that offers searching by department, instructor, course name and number, and topic. Creating the new distance learning environment has reduced by half the number of times that students in the Executive Education Master’s Program in HMP travel to campus. Now that we have completed a successful pilot and are fully supporting the HMP program, we are planning to add distance education support for the Environmental Health Sciences Master’s Program. For more information, see the interview with eLearning Specialist Vic Divecha.
We've integrated informatics into the classroom through programs such as the "Tailored Curriculum Support" pilot and introduced a very popular new technology for enhancing the classroom teaching experience, the SMART Board interactive whiteboard (funded by the University Library and the UM Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering as part of the SPH Distance Learning and Instructional Technology initiative). We participated in a teleconference and webcast featuring successful partnerships in support of public health research and practice and co-sponsored (with the SPH Office of Communications) a seminar on digital copyright issues and policies. We are also engaged in efforts to support the public health workforce through collaborations with the National Library of Medicine, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, and Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce. One of the outcomes of the collaboration is the Public Health Information and Data Tutorial. The tutorial is web-accessible and features four online learning modules: Staying Informed, Health Education Resources, Health Statistics, and Evidence Based Public Health. Key contributions to design and development of the tutorial were made by instructional designer Steve Burdick and project manager Monique Uzelac.With funding from the National Library of Medicine, we've also introduced a new position to the School, that of the Public Health Informationist. The Informationist combines knowledge of information science with subject expertise to become an information specialist in public health. In her new role as Public Health Informationist, Gillian Mayman is completing formal coursework in HBHE as well as a practicum and a research project focusing on information technology and training. To connect with the public health workforce in Michigan by providing training and information research services, we are partnering with the Michigan Center for Public Health Preparedness and the Michigan Public Health Training Center.
Summer is an important time for our unit in advancing major projects. Our staff has been re-energized by participating in a variety of Enriching Scholarship classes for professional development. We have begun work on creating the MI-INFO (Michigan Informatics) online curriculum, now that onsite training has been completed for our three partner organizations: Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion, District Health Department #2, and Washtenaw County Public Health. We are moving forward on the merit database project, envisioned to automate the work and documentation for the merit review process, with a central repository of data that allows additional functionality for dynamic report generation. We are also exploring options for delivery of a document management service for managing individual office files and personal documents. We'll include information about these projects in a future edition of the newsletter.
Nancy Allee, Director, Public Health Library & Informatics
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