Games and activities used in our teaching: Product Design Students

Since 2011 we have worked closely with the 1^st year Product Design tutors to rework the information skills workshops offered to their students. It was obvious from previous years that these students did not respond to lengthy, traditional, didactic workshops, and that shorter regular workshops might be more effective.

The main challenges were:

• Encouraging these students to use the library as a source of inspiration and information, rather than solely relying on the Internet
• Making the library seem relevant to their academic work and develop their understanding of the value of academic resources
• Developing their Internet searching skills and enabling them to become discerning users of the information found (this is important as the Internet is an important resource for them)

Inspired by a Sharon Markless workshop we decided to let the students discover the library and its resources for themselves and tell us why something is useful, rather than the other way round. Over the next couple of years we experimented with various lesson plans and activities, which did appear to engage the students, whilst introducing them to the library and the information searching process.

Summer 2013 we attended an ARLIS workshop as presenters, and were inspired by a presentation by Alan Turner on his ‘Ideas factory’ at Arts University Bournemouth, where he encouraged the students to get curious and enhance their work through research and discovery. This got us thinking about how we could refine our workshops further. Following discussion with the 1^st year tutors, we made a number of changes introduced in 2014/15 and we continue to develop and enhance these sessions. We have since rolled out information literacy workshops to 2^nd and 3^rd years which build on the 1^st years workshops. These are described below:

Examples of these workshop presentations can be seen here:

http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/pdde/PDworkshops