Image from freeimages.co.uk

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.