What would you do?
We have a 7 story library, increasing requests for introductory library instruction, and a changing learning paradigm.
University Seminar is our university's Freshman Seminar course. Every fall about 5000-6000 freshmen are expected, and therefore there are many class sections for this course. They are not required to come to the library for an instruction session, but many instructors find it beneficial for their students. The demand for instruction sessions has been increasing.
In order to teach first year students about all the library has to offer, the University Seminar library instruction session includes a tour, but we could see the tour was not reaching the students effectively.
Why we do the tour: Our objective is to introduce students to the library and empower them to become self directed learners.
Why the tour wasn't working:
- it was a walking lecture - students listened (sometimes) but did not interact with what they were seeing.
- students hung back and were unable to hear, or simply "got lost" while traveling between the seven floors of the library.
- because of these issues, students were not empowered to explore the library and its resources on their own.
Our colleague Liz King attended a presentation at LOEX 2015 about UC San Diego's experiences with creating an interactive tour using Edventure, a mobile platform. We decided to create an interactive tour of our own, with Liz King creating the initial mobile activity for our library.
About the Presenters
Tricia Boucher, User Experience Librarian, Texas State University
Lorin Flores, Undergraduate Librarian, Texas State University
Inspirations
We were inspired to use Edventure after attending presentations at LOEX and ACRL. We've also found information about using Edventure in posted slides and in the literature, which has helped us a great deal with developing our own.
Some of the other institutions using Edventure for First Year Experience are here:
- Nicole Pagowsky (Faculty Librarian at University of Arizona) feedback & insights on her Library’s 1.5 years using Edventures for orientations, library instruction, student retention, data assessment and sharing, and staff training
- UC San Diego - Crafting Freshman Engagement: A Study of Library Orientations in the Fledgling First Year Experience Program at UC San Diego presented at LOEX
- Miami University Middletown - To Google This, Turn to Page 42: Building a "Choose Your Own Research Adventure" Game
- Presentation cited this article: Mary J. Snyder Broussard, (2012),"Digital games in academic libraries: a review of games and suggested best practices", Reference Services Review, Vol. 40 Iss 1 pp. 75 – 89
- East Carolina University - Building an In-House Scavenger Hunt App to Improve Student Engagement and Assessment in First Year Seminar Library Instruction