learning games

Susan, Kevin, and I met to discuss learning games on Thursday. It was a really productive meeting with a lot of interesting ideas. We all agreed to aim for simple, quick (30-60 second) games to drive points home. We’d like to do the following four flash games:

1. Keywords/Broadening & Narrowing

Give the students cards. Let them move the cards around to be in the right order. Then, a la Price is Right, let them know how many are in the right slot.

2. Synonyms

Pictionary with several games. Go from easy to hard. Maybe in hard include abstract, idea-based text.

3. Truncation

A Family Feudesque game showing the number of results for each version of a truncated word. Then show a filter showing the most relevant words.

4. Boolean slots

A slot machine game giving lots of pennies (or lots of minorly relevant) results for “or,” silver dollars for “and,” and 20 dollar gold pieces for combinations including “not.”

Next actions

1. Boolean Slots first!
2. Start small & add on
3. Think design issues: color wheel pro
4. Collect sounds and pictures
5. Create a story board
6. Get Flash
7. Look at Google Hacks book to see about pulling real time data

It might be useful to play with a few Flash Tutorials.

possibilities for learning objects

Module 1: Keywords

• Give a sentence: let them pull out the main words. Feedback.
• Synonyms: let them enter them in on their own. Feedback.
• Broaden/Narrow: let them move around cards like the in-class activity. Feedback.

Module 2: Boolean Searching

• Quick video intro of moving Boolean circles
• &/or/not radio buttons & lighting up Boolean circles
  
• End with posing questions, response. Feedback.

Module 3: Truncation

• Explain concept with “friend*”
• Let them fill out keywords for one or two of the truncated keywords above. Feedback.
• Let them truncate one or two of the keywords above.

Module 4: Guided Keyword

• Quick video for the title & author search.
• Guided keyword: let them try using words & skills from above.
  • Given only the sentence
  • Goal: see if understand drop down options
  • Goal: see if understand radio box option
  • Feedback includes links to earlier modules
• Maybe couch feedback in “had you considered this synonym? If not, consider using the keyword exercise.”

notes from today’s meeting

Look into screen capture software

• Camtasia
• Captivate

Goal for presentation:

• 3-5 minutes on keyword searching
• walkthrough/demo
• interactive

split screen

• left side: bullets with important notes
• right side: video/interactive piece

Module 1:

• keyword
• trucation/wildcard
• boolean searching
• (would plug into catalog or database)

Module 2:

• using mod. 1 concepts in the catalog
• pull data for reinforcement?

ROUGH drafts for catalog tutorial

These are actually more like ideas for tutorials.

Traditional:

• Printout (PDF)
• Series of screenshots
• Clear and exact wording
• Explanatory

Contemporary:

• Screenshot (with audio & text)
• Walk students through basic search & guided keyword
• Could be enhanced with boxes and bubbles

Participatory:

• More of the “tutorial” model
• Short explanations, opportunity to try new skill, immediate feedback
• Could we position multiple dummy catalog windows on one page? Let user try three different combinations of keywords to see the best option?
• Is there a way to let users actually search catalog and get some kind of feedback? Maybe it wouldn’t be targeted. Maybe just probing? It could be as simple as “look at number of 2006 books, are there enough current resources for your topic?

Gaming:

• Maybe create an environment in which students get to just try out different searches and get something along the way?
• ex. keep running column of what was entered in the box and if the student thought the results were useful? (they could have checked “yes, this is useful” or “no, this is not useful”)
• Maybe a game in which they enter something in the search box, hit “search,” and instead get feedback (such as “this search would likely have returned a large number of items since you used “OR” as a connector”). The feedback could offer short video clips of instruction (in the above example, it could be as simple as a boolean diagram).

It may be that a combination approach would be most useful. Ex. maybe both “traditional” and “gaming” so students can choose based on their level of need.

notes on tutorials

In planning for a tutorial on the catalog, here are some notes on what others are doing:

UNC-G’s FIRST: Finding It! a Research Skills Tutorial

• primarily text: some dialog and some use of bold for effect
• in explaination: there are several opportunities to enter text, but no feedback on answers
• after explaination: there are opportunities to enter text and get feedback on answer
• follows this pattern for author, title, and keyword

NCSU’s LOBO: Library Online Basic Orientation

• includes books, articles, call numbers, and websites in same section
• each includes a “Show Me an Example” and a “Let Me Search the Catalog Myself”
• “Show Me an Example” is a video; the catalog video is subject searching only
• Let me Search the Catalog Myself” opens the catalog in a second window for students to try out
• Students are then asked to fill in a form with three good titles for their topic to “add to worksheet”

UT’s TILT: Texas Information Literacy Tutorial

• includes music and moving graphics
• asks users to interact with images (ex. “click search” on image of computer with catalog up, click correct place on shelf for call number order, etc)
• immediate feedback for correct & incorrect answers
• not a lot of detailed instruction for catalog, but most interactive
• interaction tended to be in a multiple-choice kind of way… very unlike “gaming” in education

University of Calgary’s Finding Full Text Journals using the U of C Library Catalogue

• video, shows exact time before you click on the link (1.58)
• video a lot like LOBO’s… silent, but makes good use of text bubbles and showing where the mouse needs to point

CMU’s Off Campus Library Service

• text on left, video on right
• the videos sometimes are of students talking about the library, sometimes screenshots with explainatory audio

UW-Parkside’s Information Literacy Tutorial

• LOTS of text followed by a quiz
• arrows to move between pages are at the top of the page. perhaps if we used this much text we’d move the arrows to the bottom to at least encourage scrolling through the pages?

Austin Community College’s The Info Game

• flashy, colorful, and sound
• primarily text (but interesting to look at) with no background sound
• some short videos (like boolean circles moving together) throughout the presentation
• a few opportunities to try things out with non-specific feedback (like entering information into a text box, then clicking “ask an expert” to see what a librarian would have entered
• follow up with quizzes, no feedback on specific answers, though you do find out how many you got right vs. wrong
• MUST take tutorial in order

UW-Madison’s Tutorials

• includes videos, tutorials, and PDF print outs
• video includes audio

St. John’s University’s Information Literacy Tutorial

• entirely in flash!
• uses car traveling analogy
• no sound, but images of people with text next to them to indicate speaking
• pictures of catalog, no screencasting
• very end: interactive quiz with immediate feedback

recap of first meeting

Today I got together with Susan and Kevin to get an idea of where we're going with this project. I was lucky to be able to stay for part of a LIB 100 revamping meeting afterwards wtih Susan, Kevin, Erik, Giz, Mary, and Caroline. Here are my notes:

next actions:

• Send really awesome "flipped" LIB100 article to Mary, Susan, Giz, Erik, Caroline, and Kevin. What was that again?
• Find library tutorial links and email to Susan and Kevin (pay attention to interactive tutorials dealing with the catalog.)
• Create a draft tutorial for the catalog. Include: subject heading, format, limiting, sorting. It's going to be challenging to make the info lit points b/c you can't really "fail" with guided keyword the way you can with author or title.
• Send draft to Susan and Kevin for consideration.
• Talk with Roz to find out what is needed for journal finder tutorial.

After this we'll look into "fun" tutorials.

Some ideas to consider:

• Susan currently uses movie clips to reiterate what is taught in class.
• Interactivity would be a good addition.
• Text based answer and response as close to real time as possible.
• I will have access to Susan & Erik's current class. Check out syllabus for interesting areas for future tutorials.
• Look at the revamp lib 100 paperwork.

If we create a text-based feedback exercise:

• Make one, see how it goes over with current LIB 100 teachers.
• What do you want to test?
• Maybe this could take the edge of grading.

Start with a proof of concept.

Software to look into:

• hot potatoes
• demobuilder: catalog and journal, not interactive
• web + javascript: allows for interaction
• camtasia: can it be interactive?
• flash (Kevin and I will use after July 1)

Sources for fun tutorials

• Revamp lib 100 paperwork
• Susan & Erik's Blackboard syllabus
• Web 2.0 technologies
• Privacy issues
• Classification & folksonomies
• Political and economic dynamics of information
• and, social epistemology (just kidding!)

Update: the "flipped" article is:
Manuel, K. (2002). Teaching Information Literacy to Generation Y [Electronic Version]. Journal of Library Administration, 36, 195-217. Retrieved 5/22/06.