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Last month I took an online course through the Association of College & Research Libraries. The course was called “On the road to information literacy success:Putting students in the driver’s seat.” The road took some interesting turns.
Assignment 1 had us participants create active learning lessons. For mine I focused on ACRL (2000) Standard I.2.d.: “Identifies the purpose and audience of potential resources (e.g. popular vs. scholarly, current vs. historical)” (p. 8). I had a couple of false starts with a want ad exercise (Shamchuk & Plouffe, 2012) and a Family Feud-type game (Yaman & Covington, 2006). These ideas came in handy later, though.
Assignment 2 asked us to create assessments for our respective lessons. The game became the assessment. As I thought about the lesson, I wondered if Family Feud was the best frame game for my chosen outcome. The want ad reminded me that sources of a type do a certain job. Then I remembered What’s my Line?, where people guess someone’s occupation.
For assignment 3 we considered learning styles and areas for further refinement. I am working on a game rubric at press time. I look forward to trying it out with a class.
I met interesting people and gained some insights, as I had hoped to do. Developing the game was a welcome surprise. For all of this I didn’t even have to get into my car.
References
Association of College & Research Libraries. (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Chicago, IL: Author.
Shamchuk, L., & Plouffe, L. (2012, August). Get active! Using active learning activities during first year information literacy sessions [Presentation slides]. Retrieved from
http://www.slideshare.net/lshamchuk/get-active-using-active-learning-activities-during-first-year-information-literacy-sessions.
Yaman, D., & Covington, M. (2006). I’ll take learning for 500: Using game shows to engage, motivate, and train. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.