CYOA
Choose your own adventure style learning
WILU 2016 Day 3: Wednesday, June 1
Presenters: Russ Algar, UBC; Maggie Faber, UBC; Ian Fraser, University of Winnipeg; Katherine Miller, UBC
Flipped classrooms, asynchronous learning, gamification, and multimodality are—by now—familiar concepts in education. Choose Your Own Adventure-style instruction brings together and builds on these ideas by allowing the student to direct their own path through more traditional learning materials. Developing and assessing nonlinear content poses some significant challenges to librarians and instructors, but also significant opportunities to reinforce learning objectives, model behavior, and increase student engagement. Our panel will present different libraries, departments, and schools who are all using “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style instruction to reach their students, and will invite the following participants to speak to the challenges and opportunities that these kinds of instructional materials present.
In the 80s, Choose Your Own Adventure books were experiments in storytelling that put the power to direct the narrative into the hands of the reader. This style of content is now being adapted for instructional purposes, allowing students to direct their own learning and flexibly encounter more traditional material. Choose Your Own Adventure-style content offers an intersection between different approaches to education and an intersection of different departments, schools, and libraries in the application of this content.
Choose Your Own Path through this Session using Kahoot!
In the spirit of Choosing Your Own Adventure, participants will choose the order of the presentations. We are using the free software, Kahoot! to poll the group. (note only responses received within 2 minutes will be counted)
To play, use any device with a web browser to access the Kahoot! website http://kahoot.it. The Game Pin is TBD.
Where should we start? Which path through this presentation shall we take? Should we visit: The Mad Scientist (Alchemy)... the Mayor of Informatopia (A Day in the City)...... or the Cryptozologist (CYOrA)?
A Day in the City
Ian Fraser, Head of Instruction at University of Winnipeg, offers A Day in the City, a library orientation that allows users to dynamically explore the value of information through the metaphor of exploring a new city.
File:WILU 2016 A day in the City.pptx
Alchemy
Russ Algar, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at University of British Columbia, developed Alchemy, a choose your own chemistry analysis tutorial program, in conjunction with Computer Science students at UBC.
File:WILU slides Algar (filetype is PDF).pdf
Choose Your Own Research Adventure (CYOrA)
Choose Your Own Research Adventure is an asynchronous learning module developed by Maggie Faber and Katherine Miller. It is part of Library Research Skills for Land and Food Systems, an information literacy tutorial for students in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC. This project is part of Scaffolding and Scaling up Integrated Experiential Learning Experiences in the Core Series, Land and Food Systems, and was funded by the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund at University of British Columbia.
File:Choose Your Own Research Adventure Slides.pptx
Click here for the Link to Twine File To modify or edit the Twine adventure, Save the file to your computer, then visit Twinery.org on your own browser and import the file. Licensed with Creative Commons Share Alike 4.0 If you do use this Twine file or publish your own version of it, we hope you will contact us . We would like to hear how it is used. Thanks!
Some Examples of "Choose Your Own Adventure" Style Learning in Libraries
1. Graphic Story. RMIT Library Quest 2016 RMIT Library Quest 2015 RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology - Australia)
Creating quests to learn the library (2015). American Library Association. These creative CYOA stories incorporate graphics, funny and engaging non-linear narratives referencing short videos, links to subject guides and the library's federated search called LibrarySearch. There is clear progress from the 2015 story to the 2016 story. It is valuable to see both versions showing the progress in their development of this library research adventure.
2. Short Videos. Fairfield Beach: the Library 2008. Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT) Islam, R., & Porter, L. (2008). Perseverance and play: Making a movie for the YouTube generation. Urban Library Journal, 15(1), 1-13. This article details an ambitious collaboration between Fairfield University librarians and the Fairfield University Media Center to create a Choose Your Own Adventure-style series of short movie segments to introduce the library services and library space in a fun way. Students used iClickers to direct the next step for the characters. Interestingly, the project did not replace a library orientation but was used in the classroom to add relevance and interest to the session.
Bibliography
Brief bibliography with abstracts on CYOA use in higher education.
Search strategy: Literature search was conducted in ERIC, LISA: Library and Information Science Abstracts, LISTA: Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts and Web of Science. Terms searched "choose your own adventure" with a publication date range limit of: 2000-May 2016. Google Scholar was also searched. In addition to limiting by publication date 2000-2016, the search strategy included further terms : “choose your own adventure” ("library instruction" OR "library tutorial" OR "information literacy") (university OR "higher education" OR college)
References
Creating quests to learn the library. (2015). American Libraries, 46(11), 63-63. An interview with Craig Anderson, university librarian at the RMIT University Library in Melbourne, Australia, is presented. Particular focus is given to his evaluation of the game Library Quest. Additional topics discussed include how Library Quest is a browser-based "choose your own adventure"-style game, how he chooses to use Library Quest and what he would have improved or added to Library Quest's services.
Islam, R., & Porter, L. (2008). Perseverance and play: Making a movie for the YouTube generation. Urban Library Journal, 15(1), 1-13. In place of a traditional library orientation lecture at Fairfield University, librarians created a chooseyour- ownadventure movie for use in the classroom with an audience response system (ARS), allowing students to vote using clickers. The library administration took a risk by sponsoring the project, but the library director believed in her staff and let us run with our ideas. When we proposed the movie, we did not have an idea for the script; we simply knew we wanted to make a movie and show it in class. Why did we decide to do this when the status quo wasn't disastrous? Like people in any industry, we were pushing ourselves to change with the times, to make our information delivery more engaging-entertaining even. Working under the charge to constantly evaluate and assess our instruction program, we questioned whether it mattered if librarians or professors liked the lecture. Who was the audience after all? If we were going to be successful, we had to captivate our students, the "Millennials," by showcasing the library, its spaces and its services, as the answer to many of their varied needs: social, educational, and recreational. In pursuit of this end, we worked with the Media Center, recruited student filmmakers, employed plenty of brainstorming, wrote a successful script, and produced Fairfield Beach: the Library. The ingredients were simple: perseverance and play. What follows is how we put them together. ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; Copyright of Urban Library Journal is the property of Urban Library Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Mahle, M. (2011). Effects of interactivity on student achievement and motivation in distance education. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 12(3), 207. This study investigated the effects of 3 levels of interactivity on achievement and motivation of college students taking a Web-based course. Participants were divided into 3 groups: a low interaction group received a treatment with a minimum level of interactivity, a reactive interaction group received a medium level of interactivity with elaborate immediate feedback, and a proactive interaction group received the highest level of interactivity which incorporated a generative activity. The study's results showed increased levels of motivation and achievement in the reactive and proactive groups, but no significant differences on level of motivation were found between the reactive and proactive groups. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
McDaniel, R., Lindgren, R., & Friskics, J. (2012). Using badges for shaping interactions in online learning environments. 2012 Ieee International Professional Communication Conference. In this paper, we describe an online course management system (titled Adventures in Emerging Media) designed to allow students to choose their own pathways through learning content (a choose-your-own-adventure online course). In addition to providing students with additional agency and narrative prompts, we also used badges, or achievements, to promote specific types of student behaviors. This study provides data collected from approximately 200 students enrolled in this online digital media course in which badges were used to incentivize targeted student behaviors, such as taking an exam within a certain timeframe or responding to student work with especially helpful feedback. In addition to a brief analysis of relevant achievement assessment data, we also describe our approach to the mechanics of achievement design and show some of the elements of design and layout used to incorporate the achievements into a learning management system.
Mundy, D. P., & Consoli, R. (2013). Here be dragons: Experiments with the concept of "choose your own adventure" in the lecture room. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 50(2), 214-223. One of the most traditional challenges of teaching is that of engaging learners with delivered content both within and outside of the taught environment. There are many different approaches to achieving learner engagement; however, this paper focuses on examining the translation and adaptation of an approach used principally by novelists, that of the non-linear narrative, to provide readers with active agency in choosing the direction of a story. The readers, in this case, are the learners and the story is the lecture. The approach is evaluated through an in-class qualitative study gathering comments from both the learners and the practitioners with regards to the impact of the approach on the learning environment and student experience. The evaluation suggests that whilst there can be problems in adopting the approach, it can have a positive impact on the learner environment, including increasing student motivation to study.
Rozmus, C., Carlin, N., Polczynski, A., Spike, J., & Buday, R. (2015). The brewsters: A new resource for interprofessional ethics education. Nursing Ethics, 22(7), 815-826. doi:10.1177/0969733014547974 Background: One of the barriers to interprofessional ethics education is a lack of resources that actively engage students in reflection on living an ethical professional life. This project implemented and evaluated an innovative resource for interprofessional ethics education. Objectives: The objective of this project was to create and evaluate an interprofessional learning activity on professionalism, clinical ethics, and research ethics. Design: The Brewsters is a choose-your-own-adventure novel that addresses professionalism, clinical ethics, and research ethics. For the pilot of the book, a pre-test/post-test design was used. Once implemented across campus, a post-test was used to evaluate student learning in addition to a student satisfaction survey. Participants and research context: A total of 755 students in six academic schools in a health science center completed the activity as part of orientation or in coursework. Ethical considerations: The project was approved as exempt by the university’s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. Findings: The pilot study with 112 students demonstrated a significant increase in student knowledge. The 755 students who participated in the project had relatively high knowledge scores on the post-test and evaluated the activity positively. Discussion: Students who read The Brewsters scored well on the post-test and had the highest scores on clinical ethics. Clinical ethics scores may indicate issues encountered in mass media. Conclusion: The Brewsters is an innovative resource for teaching interprofessional ethics and professionalism. Further work is needed to determine whether actual and long-term behavior is affected by the activity. {Spike, J. P. (2011). The brewsters : An interactive adventure in ethics for the health professions. Houston Tex.: Archimage Inc.}
More CYOA
- UBC student initiative on campus, Choose Your Own Campus