Library Voice

I’ve been working a lot lately about how to incorporate some to the concepts of video games into new and existing library services and resources.  I’ve written before about how games make you learn by doing, and I’ve pointed to how specific games teach the player how to play the game.  I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading on the topic of learning and video games, which has helped me to look at playing games in a different way.  While I’m playing a game, I’ve been looking at how the game teaches me to play, how it encourages me to master the skills, how it keeps me engaged, and how it keeps me coming back for more.  As a librarian, I’ve begun trying to see how the things that make a game an engaging learning experience can be applied to some of the things that we do in the library.  Do we need a library video game on research or plagiarism?  Is that sort of thing scalable?  If we build it, who might play it?  Or should we just try to incorporate gaming concepts into things we are already doing—-teaching, library websites, catalogs, online tutorials?

Paul at Research Quest has been working with these ideas as well.  He and I had a pretty good conversation via IM last week where we discussed these ideas.  Paul and I truly believe that librarians can create engaging educational experiences based upon video games, and perhaps even game-based learning experiences as well.  These projects can be extremely time and resource intensive, so it only make sense to start small.  Paul sums this up nicely when he writes:

But I can’t overlook the small successes. Incorporating video
game strategies into our traditional instruction is beneficial and improves our
teaching. While I’m starting to discuss and play around with developing and
modding, I’m currently working on converting the content from a traditional
power point slideshow into an open ended, branching path review.

Video game strategies work to engage our students in
educational experiences both in the long term and the short term. As an
educator, we can start big or small. But the reactions from those who are
discouraged after starting big, suggest that small successes will be more
successful in building the political capital required for the bigger gaming
projects in our libraries.

Can we do it? Yes we can! And we should.

Here’s some articles/resources that might be of interest to some:

• Seven Things You Should Know About YouTube
• Seven Things You Should Know About Facebook
• Are College Students Techno Idiots?
• Disconnects Between Library Culture and Millennial Generation Values
• Are Video Games Evil?
• New Media and Learning in the 21st Century
• Games in Higher Ed: When Halo 2, Civilization IV, and Xbox 360 Come to Campus
• EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine, Volume 29, Number 3, 2006
• Games and Learning
• Serious Games: Incorporating Video Games in the Classroom
• Simulations, Games, and Learning

These resources and more can be found in the Information Literacy and Fluency  and Games and Gaming categories in the Educause Resource Center. 

This is sweet! Librarycasting SE: Screencasts, podcasts, tutorials and titles for the sciences and engineering.

Librarycasting SE is a compilation of selected educational and information resources for the sciences and engineering, with a strong emphasis on new media and communication formats such as screencasts (pc screen video), video, and podcasts (audio). Resources covered include those produced at Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries, the VCU campus community, and the extended sciences and engineering world community beyond.

A major goal of Librarycasting SE is to make available a range of brief screencast and podcast tutorials answering specific questions, and demonstrating specific techniques, relevant to the sciences and engineering. Conveniently access these resources at any time from your Firefox browser bookmarks or RSS aggregator, through the subject-specific, automatically updated RSS feeds provided at this site. These tutorials are in constant production at VCU Libraries, and your suggestions for new tutorials in this format are always welcomed!

Pete Kirlew, Ph.D., MLIS
Reference Librarian for the Sciences and Engineering
VCU Libraries

This truly is awesome, Pete. This serves as a great model for other subject specialists. It’s a blog, it’s a podcast, it’s a screencast. No, it’s super-duper subject librarian outreach!!! Fantastic! Makes me want to go out and make some screencasts of business databases. Thanks for the inspiration, Pete.  You’ve got me thinking of new ways to expand my Business Blog.
Link via Library Marketing.

TangognaT has a great post about information literacy and faculty collaboration.

She makes several excellent points about the collaborative process:

if collaboration is bringing a class in for a library session when the students have a research assignment, I think faculty are open to that. I think that in general it might take something extra for someone to get to the stage where they think of sharing more information with the librarian as part of a discussion or consulting with the librarian about assignment design.

In my experience, a faculty member creates the assignment or project, and then asks me to give a library instruction session to the students. I am generally asked to help the students learn about finding the necessary information to complete the project. Usually I have to teach about using appropriate databases, reference books, and some search skills. The problem with this approach is that it is very resource driven. Because what I teach is often just pertinent to that one project, the skills that students learn do not necessarily transfer to future assignments. It is often very tough to squeeze in concepts of information literacy during the typical 50 minute class session. Generally, I try to talk a little about evaluation and quality during the 50 minutes, and try to make the best out of the time that I am given.

Most of my instruction is very subject-specific, as I am the business subject specialist for our library. What I am finding is that a lot more of the learning occurs outside of the library classroom. A few days after I deliver an instructional session, the students start contacting me for additional help. This works great for the students and for me. They get the intimate attention that they need, and I get the opportunity to really dig into the resources with them, while also sneaking in some good ‘ole information literacy. I also get a chance to observe what problems they are having with the assignment, as well as see what resources they find the most useful (and the easiest to use). This interaction often keeps me quite busy, as I don’t require any office hours or appointments. Appointments are nice if it is going to be a really in-depth reference session, but generally students just come to the library and ask if I am available.

One thing that I have struggled with is the fact that while I get to help students with their learning, I never get a chance to see the finished product. The application, or how one uses information, is one of the key components of information literacy. By seeing the outcome of their work, one can see how students applied the information to the project. I told a faculty member about this last quarter, and he told me that he and his colleagues would try to do better to include me in the final presentations. I actually got invited to a few last quarter, but was unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts. I hope to try to get my foot in the door again, as seeing the final project may help to understand how students are using (or misusing) the information.

The level of instructional collaboration can vary with each school, department, curriculum, or professor. Some departments and faculty members are not very open to collaboration in the classroom, while others are quite proactive in initiating library instruction opportunities. I think it is important to start with a small group of folks who are enthusiastic about library instruction and information literacy. Word of the success of these initial partnerships will spread to others, and library instruction business will increase. It’s important not to get frustrated, as these relationships often take quite a long time to develop. As a librarian, it is essential to try to understand the academic culture, not attempt to change it. With each small success and new relationship, you will have the more opportunities in establishing new (or improving) instructional opportunities for information literacy.

LibraryInstruction.com has a wealth of resources about information literacy and library instruction.

This site contains library instruction lesson plans, articles about library instruction, a large library instruction bibliography, and links to library instruction resources. This site also includes material relating to information literacy.

The Lesson Plans section of the site appears to be really interesting, and could provide some good ideas for those whose teaching methods are stuck in a rut. One of the more creative lesson plans uses a Gin & Tonic analogy to teach boolean searching. The site’s author, Michael Lorenzen ecourages others to send him ideas to post as he explains, “This site will work best if others contribute.” If I come across any good ideas, I’ll be sure to send them Michael’s way.