Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

2018 Special Focus: Education in a Time of Austerity and Social Turbulence  21–23 June 2018 University of Athens, Athens, Greece http://thelearner.com/2018-conference

Theme 8: Technologies in Learning

• Technology and human values: learning through and about technology
• Crossing the digital divide: access to learning in, and about, the digital world
• New tools for learning: online digitally mediated learning
• Virtual worlds, virtual classrooms: interactive, self-paced and autonomous learning
• Ubiquitous learning: using the affordances of the new mediaDistance learning: reducing the distance

Theme 9: Literacies Learning

• Defining new literacies
• Languages of power: literacy’s role in social access
• Instructional responses to individual differences in literacy learning
• The visual and the verbal: Multiliteracies and multimodal communications
• Literacy in learning: language in learning across the subject areas
• The changing role of libraries in literacies learning
• Languages education and second language learning
• Multilingual learning for a multicultural world
• The arts and design in multimodal learning
• The computer, internet, and digital media: educational challenges and responses

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PROPOSAL: Paper presentation in a Themed Session

Title

Virtual Reality and Gamification in the Educational Process: The Experience from an Academic Library

short description

VR, AR and Mixed Reality, as well as gaming and gamification are proposed as sandbox opportunity to transition from a lecture-type instruction to constructivist-based methods.

long description

The NMC New Horizon Report 2017 predicts a rapid application of Video360 in K12. Millennials are leaving college, Gen Z students are our next patrons. Higher Education needs to meet its new students on “their playground.” A collaboration by a librarian and VR specialist is testing the opportunities to apply 360 degree movies and VR in academic library orientation. The team seeks to bank on the inheriting interest of young patrons toward these technologies and their inextricable part of a rapidly becoming traditional gaming environment. A “low-end,” inexpensive and more mobile Google Cardboard solution was preferred to HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens or comparable hi-end VR, AR and mixed reality products.

The team relies on the constructivist theory of assisting students in building their knowledge in their own pace and on their own terms, rather than being lectured and/or being guided by a librarian during a traditional library orientation tour. Using inexpensive Google Cardboard goggles, students can explore a realistic set up of the actual library and familiarize themselves with its services. Students were polled on the effectiveness of such approach as well as on their inclination to entertain more comprehensive version of library orientation. Based on the lessons from this experiment, the team intends to pursue also a standardized approach to introducing VR to other campus services, thus bringing down further the cost of VR projects on campus. The project is considered a sandbox for academic instruction across campus. The same concept can be applied for [e.g., Chemistry, Physics, Biology) lab tours; for classes, which anticipate preliminary orientation process.

Following the VR orientation, the traditional students’ library instruction, usually conducted in a room, is replaced by a dynamic gamified library instruction. Students are split in groups of three and conduct a “scavenger hunt”; students use a jQuery-generated Web site on their mobile devices to advance through “hoops” of standard information literacy test. E.g., they need to walk to the Reference Desk, collect specific information and log their findings in the Web site. The idea follows the strong interest in the educational world toward gaming and gamification of the educational process. This library orientation approach applies the three principles for gamification: empowers learners; teaches problem solving and increases understanding.
Similarly to the experience with VR for library orientation, this library instruction process is used as a sandbox and has been successfully replicated by other instructors in their classes.

Keywords

academic library

literacies learning

digitally mediated learning