“reflective summary”

This semester I have worked with Susan Smith, Head of Information Technology, and Kevin Gilbertson, Webmaster, of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library, to create learning objects to support our LIB100, Accessing Information in the 21st Century, course.

This class is worth one credit hour and is an elective for Wake Forest University students. Our goal was to create quick and fun modules that could be used to illustrate simple library research concepts. 

The three we chose to focus on were broadening and narrowing a topic, truncation, and Boolean searching.  We chose to do this by making a game where one could move cards around from broadest to narrowest, use a “Family Feud” style game to illustrate truncation, and make a slot machine to demonstrate varying attributes of different Boolean terms.

Along the way, we planned for me to meet several objectives.  These were:

1. Spend time reading articles, books, and appropriate websites dealing with online pedagogy and distance education.
2. Learn to use specfific software that will incorporate proper online pedagogy.  Software may include: Camptasia, Demobuilder, and/or Captivate.
3. Output up to 5 learning objects to enhance the Z. Smith Reynolds LIB100 information literacy program.
4. Work with Z. Smith Reynolds reference librarians and LIB100 course instructors to ensure the learning objects are appropriate for their use.
5. Hold a small focus group to test Learning Objects.

I did read Susan’s book, Web-Based Instruction: A Guide for Librarians, as well as a number of articles and websites.  Though I don’t have the grasp of the subject that I would if I had taken coursework in the topic I did learn many principles that were useful in designing our learning objects.   

I was already familiar with Camptasia and Demobuilder, so I focused on learning Captivate for the first half of the practicum.  I feel fairly comfortable working in Captivate and am amazed at the power the program offers.  It is clearly designed to develop online learning experiences, and I particularly appreciate the branching and feedback options.

As powerful as Captivate is, though, there are some drawbacks.  Boolean Slots (the game I made using Captivate) grew to over 100 slides which impacts loading speed of the game as well as de-bugging time for me.  Every time I had to make a single change I’d have to go through the program, slide by slide, to make the change universally.  Around this time Kevin gave me a copy of Flash.

I used Flash to make Truncation Feud and the Narrowing and Broadening Your Topic games.  From the beginning I was impressed with the power Flash offers and I am now considering buying a student copy for myself.  I would not say that I became as familiar with Flash as I did with Captivate because Flash is much more complex.  I was able to get Flash to interact with the user’s mouse behavior and with the user’s text, but it was a battle each time I had to learn something new.  I am not a programmer, so I had to find information in the “help” section of the program, discussion boards, and Z. Smith Reynolds library books.  This being said, I picked up what I learned fairly quickly, and if I could devote a week or two to learning it, I think I would feel comfortable with the software.  

I was able to complete three learning objects (described below) for this practicum.  These were the original five that Susan, Kevin, and I discussed and they all ended up fairly close to what we originally described. 

The two goals that I don’t feel I met in the spirit of the objectives were to work with reference librarians and to hold focus groups.  We never had an opportunity to set up a meeting with the reference librarians.  By the time a learning object was in form enough to show people, it was too late in the semester.  I did, however, show a few of them to a few librarians when I was able to chat with them for a few minutes.  The feedback was mostly positive, but I did get the feeling that we would need to really market the learning objects to them.  We would also need to explain exactly how they could fit into their classes. 

I didn’t get to hold focus groups in the spirit of the objectives, either, for the same reasons.  However, along the way I would show the games to anyone who would look at them.  I got some very good feedback from a Wake Forest University Faculty member as well as from friends and family.

I am hoping to be able to work on these two objectives in the way we originally intended in the time between semesters.  It’s much quieter in the library then, so we can get time with librarians more easily and the students who are working are often happy to do something rather than just sit at a quiet desk. 

This practicum was extremely useful for me.  Though technology is one of my hobbies, I haven’t officially participated in this aspect of technology in a library before.  I have learned that I’m a pretty quick learner when it comes to simple code, but that I do need to devote blocks of time to researching.  I’ve learned that I really like pedagogy and would like to have spent more time focusing on that.