Instruction Construction poster

Beyond common instruction barriers such as lack of time within the curriculum and students’ overestimation of their skills, graduate behavioral health students are frequently non-traditional students with widely varied ages and technical savvy.  Their research topics can be quite disparate, benefiting from research in varied databases using different controlled vocabularies.  Pre-instruction, 1st year doctoral marriage and family therapy students were surveyed regarding their confidence using controlled vocabulary in searching.   Visual and interactive exercises were integrated into instruction; students tagged an image, and suggested tags were visually displayed in a word cloud.  Results and relation to controlled vocabulary concepts were discussed.  A post-instruction survey documented student confidence of controlled vocabulary as well as students’ reflections on the activity.