ACRL 2009 Feel the Buzz Presentation

Neal Baker, Earlham College, Shawn McCann and I will be presenting on 21st century fluencies and gaming at ACRL 2009 in Seattle. Some of our panel session will build on our WILU 2008 presentation, but exploring the link with the AAC&U’s LEAP campaign and the ACRL Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators will be new and uncharted territory (hope we don’t get lost!)

Games and higher education: WILU 2008

I recently attended WILU 2008 in Kelowna, BC. Krista Godfrey, Shawn McCann and I presented a session on “Transforming Information Literacy“. In the first part of the workshop, we talked about 21st century “fluencies” or skills, how these relate to information literacy, and whether or not we–and our students–have these skills. In the second part, we looked at games, simulations and virtual worlds, and World of Warcraft in particular, to see how they might help us develop 21st century skills. If we could do it again, I’d change some of our activities, and incorporate a case study. We received some positive feedback, but my impression was that, although participants found the topic interesting, it was not something that they felt was particularly relevant to their own environments *at the moment*. As one colleague said to me (quite sincerely), “It’s good to know that someone has the resources to investigate these kind of things.” Since our mission is to be the most innovative academic library in Canada, it’s a priority for us. Our time for discussion at the end was too short, so if you attended, I’d love to hear your feedback.

There was another group looking at games as a way to address information literacy: Jerremie Clyde and Chris Thomas from the University of Calgary are modifying (“modding”, I gather, is the correct term) a first-person shooter game called Benevolent Blue. I’ll be very interested to see the final product. I have to say kudos to them also for a very engaging presentation; no PowerPoint! (which we were also guilty of using, I regret to say).

I’ll be attending the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education conference in Windsor, ON, in June, and of particular interest is the session on “Games and Simulations in Higher Education“.