Search Mastery Speaker Series: Dr. Beth St. Jean
Date/Time: Thursday, September 23, 2021 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Location: Virtual
HackHealth Studies: Improving Middle School Students’ Digital Health Literacy
Abstract
In this talk, Beth will share her team’s findings from working with local school librarians on the HackHealth after-school program. She will cover three HackHealth studies: (1) Bit by Bit: Unpacking Health Literacy Instruction for Young People, which focuses on sharing the specific health literacy-related challenges faced by participants; (2) “There’s a creepy guy on the other end at Google!”: Engaging middle school students to elicit their mental models of Google through their drawings; and (3) Impacts of the HackHealth After-School Program: Motivating Youth through Personal Relevance which shares participants’ and parents’ thoughts about the impacts of the children’s participation in HackHealth.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Beth St. Jean is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies, Associate Director of the Information Policy and Access Center, and an affiliate faculty member of the Horowitz Center for Health Literacy, all at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. St. Jean holds a PhD in Information and a Master’s degree in Information (Library & Information Services specialization) from the University of Michigan School of Information. Dr. St. Jean’s research aims to improve people’s long-term health outlooks by exploring the important interrelationships among their health-related information behaviors, their health literacy, their health-related self-efficacy, and their health behaviors.
This talk is part of the UMD iSchool Search Mastery Speaker Series, hosted by the Search Mastery Interest Group.