Feeling Tapped Out

Since returning from LOEX, I've felt creatively drained and tapped out. This past week I scrambled to get caught up. And with the summer classes starting on Monday, I am diving right back into instruction. Monday morning I have an introduction section for our college's Research and Writing course which is focused on the region of Oceania. Over the past few semesters, I've opened their first research paper with an overview of the topic and lecture on potential topics. This past semester I modified it to incorporate student choice and gaming strategies.

Although those sessions went well and the student feedback was positive, as the semester went on I grew more uncomfortable about the long lectures the librarians were giving at the beginning of each paper. If I'm an advocate for video game strategies, like personalization, multiple paths, decision making and feedback, as ways to engage our student - a 45 minute traditional lecture didn't use any of those strategies.

Instead of a traditional format, I'm designing the session to focus on student exploration of topics and having them share the topics they found. The ideal is to get me out from in front of the class and have the students more engaged and sharing with each other.

Over the past year I spent time developing instruction sessions with specific video game strategies in mind, now it is time to go back and look at the other sessions and see how they can be adapted.


Image via Flickr.com by Rob Surreal