Carla Marchesan, the King’s Foundation
Those involved with providing inductions and teaching information literacy will be familiar with the frustration of finding out that after all the effort that goes into designing a class, quite a few of the attendees do not retain a lot. So, you may start thinking where you went wrong, maybe having impostor syndrome, thinking there might be something wrong in your teaching, and try to find ways to ensure higher retention.
Thankfully, there are always students who soak up your every word and successfully apply the skills and knowledge you shared to maximum effect, and, when they leave, let you know that they have acquired skills for life and are grateful for it, and you couldn’t ask for a better reward and professional satisfaction.
Although reassured that you did something right after all, like the good shepherd, you now need to illuminate the path for your lost sheep, and you look for ways to engage your audience and to ensure maximum retention.
For the past 18 years, I have introduced games both for teaching and assessment, not only in library inductions and information and visual literacy classes, but also in training interns, and in faculty, professional staff and visiting scholars’ inductions. I keep an eye on relevant literature and have attended events, and after some experimenting, I have been using my own choice of games that take time limits into consideration, like treasure hunts in library inductions, trees of knowledge for constructing effective searches, building geometric patterns as mind maps, among others, and I have found that one of the most effective and appreciated means of playful assessment is the use of crosswords.
I am a solo librarian working for an educational charity providing post-graduate programmes, MA and PhD by practice, and lately a one year foundation level course. We have no access to resources available to state-funded institutions, and a very limited library budget, so I have to be creative and find free or very affordable tools. In that quest, I came across WordMint, https://wordmint.com/puzzles paid a nominal one-off basic fee, (it was a long time ago and the model has changed), and used it to create crosswords for assessment. You can still sign up for free to try it out (full functionality is available via subscription).
It is possible to create other games such as bingo cards, wordsearch, word scramble, bubble tests, and worksheets, but having limited time, crosswords have proven time and content effective. In a class context, we often do that as a class exercise towards the end and before the compulsory, anonymous feedback that participants are required to fill in before leaving the class. I keep the feedback short and easy with the optional box to say what worked and what didn’t, and almost everyone comments on how much they enjoyed the crosswords.
Doing the crosswords as a group has several advantages. It is not only time efficient, but also helps bonding among the students especially at library inductions when they do not know each other well yet. It helps shy students not to disappear at the bottom of the class but without being in the spotlight, it creates a playful and better mood than doing it individually, it also keeps participants actively engaged preventing them from drifting away. It promotes higher information retention. Artists and architects are haptic learners and prefer concrete tools rather than e-tools, so an hands on test is usually better received than an online test. And everybody seems happy at the end, and more inclined to fill in the feedback forms (positively). 8 advantages, not a bad score!
Below is an example of a crossword test for new members of staff (architects and planners) following their library induction and familiarization with UDC. You can have a go and check the answers on the completed puzzle below. Bear in mind that, like most libraries using UDC, I use a simplified and adapted version, see the use of :504 below.
These are the answers to the crosswords given to participants at the TeachMeet based on the content of the two presentations plus two questions on architecture:
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