Library Voice

I’ve been doing an evaluation exercise with many of my English 151 classes for the last couple of years.  It works pretty well, and I’ve had several instructors request that I repeat it again for their future classes.  Many of my colleagues have been asked about this exercise, so I thought I would put it down it writing.

First, a little background on our English 151 library sessions.  We generally get to see each section of English 151 for a 2-3 hour period, usually during the middle of the 10-week quarter.  We teach them how to use the online catalog, how to search for articles, a little about navigating our website, and usually a little about evaluation.  The English classes are our best bet in getting most of the first-year students familiar with the library.  Many students won’t ever have another library instruction session in their college career, but rather than try to teach them everything they could possibly know about the library, we try to address more general themes.  One of those themes is evaluating sources, and we all tend to teach this a little differently.  Here is one of the more successful exercises that I use to teach evaluation.  If you have any questions or if anything isn’t clear, please post a comment and I’ll try to answer as best as I can.

The Exercise

1.  I play the following YouTube video for the class. It takes about seven minutes.

2.  While the video is playing, I take notes on a whiteboard at the front of the class.  Basically I am writing down things the people say in the video that really stick out at me, things that I might want to question.  If you listen to the video, you’ll get the idea of the type of things that might raise a flag.

Notes on the whiteboard

3.  After the video is over, I ask the class what they thought of the video, and this usually generates some conversation.  If no one talks, I’ve got the notes on the whiteboard at the front of the class.  I’ll mention thinks like the “Luke Skywalker meets…..” comment, or ask them about what things the panel may have said that may cause them to be less credible.   I also ask them about the supposed “expert” on the panel, and ask what makes her credible.

4.  With the expert, I like to point out that she had not played the game that she was criticizing at all.  I also mention that the anchorwoman did not allow the real expert, the game journalist, to speak much at all.  We then talk about all the other panelists, and discuss what gives them the authority to talk about the game.  As an example, the anchorwoman “went on the internet” to do research, one panelist questioned “what happened to the days of Atari and PacMan” and that she felt “old”, and another panelist compared games to Playboy Magazine.

5.  In examining the clip, I like to specifically focus on one of the expert’s points about game statistics.  She alleges that teenagers are the majority of game players.  However, if you check the Entertainment Software Association’s website, you’ll see that the average gamer is actually 35 years old.  The expert also mentions a “new study out of the University of Maryland,” but I try to point out that there are numerous studies about video games, and nearly all of them contradict each other.  If you want to find a study that says video games make you kill people, then you can find that pretty easily.  If you want to find a study that says video games will make you smarter and a better team player, entire books have been written on those topics as well.  The point is to look critically at these studies and find other information that strengthens and weakens the argument.

6.  I then point to this blog post on Joystiq about the Fox News/Mass Effect controversy.  I explain to them what happened in a nutshell.  First, Fox News aired the video shown above, then someone (most likely an angry gamer) copied the video and uploaded it to YouTube.  (FYI, more than one video was posted). Next, multiple gaming blogs embedded the video(s) on their pages, whereby millions of gamers saw the video and became enraged.  Not content to just sit on their hands, many of these gamers went to Amazon.com and rated the expert’s book (which happened to be promoted during the video segment on Fox).  Amazon actually removed over 400 negative reviews of the book, but most of them said something like  <paraphrase>”after never actually reading the book, I can tell you that this book is an utter piece of garbage and the author has no idea what she is talking about.”  I can say this because, since I haven’t read the book, I am still an authority on the subject.”</paraphrase>   The expert later apologized publicly via the New York Times, but I don’t think Fox News ever ran a retraction of the story.

7.  The entire exercise, including watching the video and discussion, generally takes no longer than 15 minutes.  More than 15 minutes, and I find myself belaboring the point too much and their minds start to drift.  If you use this, try to keep it fresh and lively, engage the students for a few minutes, then move on to the next thing on your agenda.  I usually do the exercise after they we have had time for hands-on work and they have found a few articles or books.  It’s a good way to bring the class focus back together after the hands-on individual activities.

So what’s the point?

The point of the exercise is to demonstrate to the students that evaluation of information goes beyond  telling the difference between popular and  scholarly articles.  This exercise shows them that they should look at things critically, regardless of whether they are doing academic research, watching the news, buying a new camera, or trying to decide which movie to go see.  Even in real life outside of academia, we are required to make choices about the information that we ingest and digest.  Even when information is fed to us via Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, our professors, or our mothers,  it’s important to understand and look for bias and misinformation.  I get better with the exercise the more I do it, and by the conversation it starts with the students, I believe it really is effective at making my point.

I hope that this is useful to someone and that if people use it, they’ll make it better.  If you try it and it works, please let me know.  I’d love to hear what worked, what didn’t, and what changes you made to make the exercise better.

I’m also curious what other librarians and teachers are doing, as I’m always looking for new ways to be more effective in the classroom.  Have you seen something that really worked, or have you tried something that really made the point of evaluation clear to the students?  If so, I’d love to hear about it.

Because it’s growing by leaps and bounds, that’s why!

“The number of unique viewers of online video increased 5.2% year-over-year according to The Nielsen Company, from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million in January 2010.”  I’d like to think that a few of my videos that I created in the last year have contributed to a growth in that number.

Today I did a count of my videos, and discovered that I  created 27 business research videos and 21 library-related videos (like the ones I post on this blog)  in 2009. My business research videos were viewed over 2600 times, and the more general library videos have been viewed over 4200 times.  Most of my videos took less than an hour to produce, from start to finish, so the return on investment is quite huge.  It’s good to know that something that takes so little effort to put together is getting used so frequently.  For me, web video offers a great way to reach my users.

I’m in the process of putting together a series of blog posts on how I use and create web video, including services, tools, and more.  Hopefully librarians and others will find the information useful.  Look for the posts coming soon.  In the meantime, if you have any questions about web video, please leave a comment.

This is a video that I put together last week to address a complaint that a faculty member had with her students’ research. The students were finding one particular resource and overusing and over-citing it in their projects. To address her concern, I put together this video and posted it all over my Business Blog, Biz Wiki, and I even listed it in the course management system. I could tell via my blog hits and the stats on Blip.TV that the video was viewed by quite a few students after they got the message through the class email system. (I’m embedding YouTube here to avoid confusing the hit count, but I generally use Blip.TV as my primary method of distributing video.)

The video only took me about 30 minutes to put together, using my Flip Mino camera and Camstudio to record the screen. I wrote the script out the night before on the back of an envelope while waiting for a pizza to cook in the oven. The script was basically just an outline that explained what I wanted to talk about and in what order. The entire video is just 3 separate clips, all shot with one take for each clip. I trimmed and joined the 3 clips in Windows Movie Maker. The entire project was done before a 9 a.m., including uploading, encoding, and distributing to Blip.TV. I deleted junk email and made coffee while the video rendered on my computer, so I was able to do other things while working on the project. The video is not perfect, but I don’t think it has to be to get the job done. I also think the video is a bit more persuasive than if I had just sent all of the students an email.

What are your thoughts? Are you using video in a really cool way? I’d love to learn what others are doing.

Last night I got an IM question from a student while staffing our IM reference service.  She was in the stacks, but “was totally overwhelmed” with how many books we had and was very confused about how to actually find a book.  Since four floors separated us, I decided to send her my video on how to find a book in our library.  It’s a rather cheesy video that I made last summer with my Flip video camera.  As is typical, after sending the student the link to the video, I never heard back.

This morning, I taught a library session for a freshman English class.  About 45 minutes into the class, two girls mentioned how they had watched my video last night and found it really useful.  It turns out that the girls were the same patron that I sent the video to last night.  It was a very cool “small world” experience, and I was able to use the experience as a way to promote our Ask A Librarian service to the other students in the class.

I’m glad that the students found our IM transaction to be helpful, and that got me to thinking.  What if I had given them bad service last night?  What impact might that have had on their experience during this morning’s class?  How would it have impacted future library experiences?  What if they told their classmates that they were treated poorly?  We almost never get to meet or see the patrons that we help via IM, chat, or email.  With IM and chat, there is almost never a real name tied to the patron on the other end, so it can be easy to be less personal with the patron.  If you’re having a bad day, it can also be easier to be rude or short to a person who you cannot see, or whose name you do not know.   The girls this morning were extremely engaged, and worked very hard during the session.  They asked a lot of questions, and I think their overall impression of our library is very positive.  I wonder if we assumed we would meet each virtual patron the next day in person, how might that affect our interractions with our virtual patrons?  Likewise, how might our patrons’ perceptions of the library change?  It’s a small world, after all, and it’s only getting smaller.

This Friday I am giving the sophomore business clusters and orientation to business research and resources, as I do at the beginning of every quarter.  Some of the research topics are easier than others for a librarian to teach.  In general, the larger the industry (automobile, airlines, retail, music) the easier it is to use business databases to find the necessary information.  Likewise, it’s generally easier to teach the students how to use the necessary databases if they have topics that will actually work with them.

This quarter, the first project is the social networking industry.  Needless to say, you can’t exactly find company financials for Facebook in Hoover’s since it is a private company, and the most appropriate NAICS classification for the industry is “Internet Content Providers.”  I’ve got a few ideas of places to go for articles, but I thought I would ask other experts in social networking (my fellow librarians) where they might look for information.  The project description is below, and I would love to show my students how librarians used a social software (this blog) to do research on the social networking industry.  Please leave a comment below if you’d like to help out.  This will also be cross-posted on my Business Blog.

Your team is to conduct extensive research on the history, current condition, and future of the social networking industry.  You are expected to make extensive use of library as well as internet resources for this study.  PLEASE REMEMBER:  It is always our expectation that you back up your findings with the data found in your research, and that you make EXPLICIT REFERENCE to numbers where necessary.

In particular, you will answer the following questions:

1.    How do social networking firms make money?
2.    Two of the main competitors in this field are facebook.com and myspace.com.  Which one stands the best chance of winning this competitive battle?
3.    Other than the threat they pose to each other, what is the biggest threat these two organizations face?

Each observation or recommendation you make must be substantiated by the research you conduct, with clear justifications provided in all cases.

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.

Some Educause articles of interest:

• Ensuring the Net Generation Is Net Savvy
• Getting Past Google: Perspectives on Information Literacy from the Millennial Mind
• How Choice, Co-Creation, and Culture Are Changing What It Means to Be Net Savvy

I’ve yet to read these but they look very interesting, particularly for a librarian who is striving to understand patrons needs and provide the most relevant instruction and services. 

I haven’t been posting much, mostly due to having several things on my plate at one time. One thing that I did manage to get off my plate this week was our screencast that covers the Basics of Academic Search Premier. The screencast/tutorial teaches users the following:

1. how to break a complex question into keyword terms,
2. how to find scholarly articles, magazines, or newspapers about a topic in Academic Search Premier,
3. and how to use the database to expand search strategies and maximize search results.

I probably put about 20 hours into the project, which resulted in a 15 minute screencast. It took me several tries to get the storyboard arranged how I wanted it, and I kept tweaking the examples that I used. I hope the result is something that our students (and others ) will use to understand basic searching in ASP.

The screencast was created with Captivate. The concluding movie was captured with iMovie and then imported into Flash.  The screencast can be viewed here, but please note that it is not dialup friendly.   Also, Captivate-generated Flash files do not play nicely with Flash 6, so you may need to update your Flash player for the screencast to work properly.

I’ve taken a new interest in gaming lately. It’s driving my wife a little nuts, and I can understand why. She’s wondering why in the world I’ve recently started playing my Playstation 2 again, after it sat dormant and dusty for quite a long time. I suppose part of my renewed interest in gaming has to do with the reading I’ve been doing. I’ve been reading such titles as What Video Games Teach us About Video Games and Literacy and Learning, Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever, and Don’t Bother Me Mom I’m Learning. These titles have helped me get a better grasp of the learning styles of our undergraduates, and I hope that this understanding will help me to be a better reference librarian and teacher. Playing games has given me a little insight into these learning styles as well, and I hope to incorporate some of the characteristics of gaming into screencasts and online tutorials.

Like many 30-year-olds, I grew up with gaming. I had an Intellivision, a Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, a Playstation, and now a Playstation 2. I never have been a video game junkie, as I also played a number of sports, was a skater, and a boy scout. Video games never dominated my life, but I always enjoyed playing games. Since growing older, gaming took a back seat to other things such as house maintenance, trying to be a good husband and father, and learning to play the guitar. My wife got me the Playstation 2 for my birthday in 2003, and I’ve played it off and on over the years. Unfortunately, my patience grew thin for a number of the games I was playing (frankly, I wasn’t very good) and I stopped playing it.

Since I’ve started playing again, I’ve gotten a deeper understanding of what made me stop playing in the first place. As I said before, I wasn’t very good a most of the games I owned, so I only played the one that I was good at. As much as I love Gran Turismo 3, I eventually got really bored with the driving game and therefore stopped playing the PS2 altogether. When I picked up the controller again a few months ago, I made a real effort to avoid playing that game. Instead, I played Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Burnout 3: Takedown, Madden 2004, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 (THPS4). All of these are older games and have been sitting on my shelf since I first got the PS2 in 2003. I initally avoided playing these games not because they weren’t good games (they are all excellent) but because I was not very good at them. I thought that I would just be able to sit down and play these games without any problems. As it turns out, I’m not as good as I thought I was, and I didn’t have the patience to learn how to play the games better. However, after taking the time to learn the games, I’ve become a lot more patient with learning the games. I’m now a lot more willing to get killed or fail a goal or lose a football game over and over again. In the process of my learning how to play these games, I’ve seen a lot of things that can be incorporated into how we design web-based tutorials and virtual learning experiences. The following games all present how-to-play-the-game information in different ways, and each way could potentially be modeled in future library tutorials and screencasts.

Burnout 3: Takedown is an arcade-style racer in which the player controls the race car. Burnout offers a variety of gameplay, but the main point of the game is to win the races at all costs. This involves high-speed racing through city streets and crashing opponents on your way to victory. The game is fairly easy to play as it only uses a few of the Playstation 2 controller buttons. As such, the game offers a traditional demonstration of how the game works. The demo shows the controls and explains the rules of the game, all within a demonstration of actual game play. Many library screencasts and tutorials have followed this method of instruction, as it is perhaps the easiest to do. However, I know that I have been guilty of giving the user way too much information. What I learned from Burnout 3 is to give the user/player enough information to know how to play (or use the database, catalog, etc), but don’t give them too much information that it keeps them from playing. Many users just want to know enough to get them started, such as which buttons to push. They’ll figure everything else out by playing the game.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a game of tactical espionage action. You play as a character who has to infiltrate enemy territory to keep them from stealing a nuclear weapon. You are vastly outnumbered, so you have to sneek around without being caught. The gameplay is a little more complex and it takes advantage of more of the controller’s buttons. This game offers a different sort of instructional help. As the game opens, you are greeted on your codec radio by Otacon, your friendly support staff who is back at the base. As you walk around the game, Otacon (and later, the Colonel) offers advice on how to solve a problem or tells your character what he needs to do next in the mission. For example, if you find a new weapon in the game, Otacon will tell you about the weapon and how it can be used. Some of the conversations are initiated by Otacon or the Colonels, as they will call you when they think you need to know something about the mission. At other times, if you get stuck in a particular part of the game, or if you forget what your mission objectives were, you can contact Otacon or the Colonel. Unfortunately you cannot ask your question in your own words each time, but generally the advice they give will get you back on the right track. Imagine if we had this sort of help in a library catalog or database. What if the frustrated user clicked on the help button when he was looking at a subject heading, and the catalog told him enough information about how to use the subject heading? How might this point-of-need instruction give our users the weapons they need to understand the catalog?

Madden NFL is one of the most-popular video games on the market. Most gamers have one (if not several) versions of the game. I currently own and play Madden NFL 2004. Madden is easily the most-complex of the four games that I have discussed. In playing a game of football in Madden, the player has to understand the rules of football, comprehend offensive and defensive alignments, be familiar with play-calling strategies, and understand his team’s and opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. There’s a lot going on there, and then there are all the buttons. Each of the Playstation 2’s eight buttons is used in playing this game, and the button assignments change depending on whether the player is on offense or defense. Despite all of this complexity, Madden is a fun (but not easy) game to learn. Madden 2004 offers a variety of ways to learn the game. Built into the franchise mode of the game is a feature called Mini Camp. Before your team can start the pre-season schedule, you have to take them through the skill-building process of minicamp. During mini camp, you can choose one player to work on a particular drill. If you complete the drill successfully, you get an extra point to boost that player’s ability in a particular area. This is hands-on learning at it’s best as while you are trying to tackle the dummy, rush for yards, or complete a pass, you are learning about controlling the players in Madden. Another instructional method is the Football 101 feature in Madden 2004. This feature allows you to pick an offensive play, and John Madden will explain and demonstrate how to successfully run the play. After he shows you how the play works, you get the chance to try the play on a real defense. In this scenario, the player can learn by watching the play run and by running the play themselves. I think many librarians use this method in their classroom instruction, but I wonder how many are able to incorporate this into tutorials and screencasts. Finally, Madden 2004 also offers a point-of-need instructional support, as the player can “Ask Madden” for play suggestions during a given scenario. John Madden will tell you something like, “Try this play in this situation” rather than “It’s third and one and you’ve called six running plays in a row, so try a Play-action pass.” Once again, this type of point-of-need support gives the user enough information to get them by in a given situation, not burden them with too many details.

The final game I’d like to mention is Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. In this game, the gamer plays as a skateboarder who is trying to accomplish skating goals. The gameplay of THPS4 is fantastic, as there is a pretty good variety of goals. I find this game interesting from an instructional design standpoint because it offers none of the features that I have already talked about. There is no point-of-need help, nor is there any type of demonstration. When I first started playing this game, this was really frustrating. How in the world was I supposed to figure out how to play the game? I would try to accomplish one of the game’s goals and fail over and over and over again. Finally, after reaching my wits end, I started skating around the level to find other goals. As it turned out, there were other goals that were more manaegable for my skill level. Accomplishing these easier goals was difficult as well, but I was learning how to play the game in the process. The satisfaction that I got after completing each goal is very hard to describe, because you feel like you have really accomplished something when the goal is done. I then understood the game a lot more. THPS4 is a game that is meant to be explored. The levels in the game are huge and encourage exploration. The goals themselves are pretty open-ended, as the player can do his own tricks to accomplish the goal (as opposed to duplicating a running play in Madden). It is through this exploration that the player becomes more familiar with the controls, the gameplay, and the strategies needed to be successful. Does this open exploration work for all learners? I’d say definitely not, as learning in this way can be particularly time consuming and frustrating. However, open exploration, or allowing a user time to explore at his own pace, is something that does need to be addressed in tutorial and screencast design.

I believe all four games contain certain elements that we can adapt as we design tutorials, screencasts, and even catalogs and databases for our library users. Our users are growing up with games, and these games are extremely capable at keeping the player’s attention while he/she learns how to play the game. Perhaps by understanding how players learn in video games, we can take advantage of this knowledge and create more effective resources for our users. What games have you played lately? How did you learn to play the game and how might that be applied to library instruction or tutorials? What games do you see your kids playing, and how do those games keep their attention while they are learning? The next time you, your friends, or your kids are playing video games, try to observe the learing experience in the games and seek to understand the learners who are playing them.

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.
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