EDUCAUSE | Library Items

B-Schools in Second Life: It?s more than just Fun and Games; It?s the Confluence of Playing, Learning, and Working

"A few months back, at the beginning of the semester, National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) made an award to Babson College and the Sloan Consortium to develop a virtual (business) incubator in Second Life. Students in this class would engage in research and development that had the potential of making a significant difference in the field of entrepreneurship globally."

Putting What Works to Better Use

Colleges have proven techniques to improve student learning, but too few students ? especially from at-risk populations ? have access to them, study finds.

Repurposing Open Source Software for Agile Digital Image Library Development

In 2007, the University of West Florida Department of Digital and Learning Technologies was charged with the task of rapidly developing a digital image library focusing on the university's upcoming 40th anniversary. This project was to highlight a spectrum of the university's archival holdings with special attention to images and linking to them permanently from the libraries' web site and University Special Collections and Archives.

The Effectiveness of a Web-based Board Game for Teaching Undergraduate Students Information Literacy Concepts and Skills

To teach incoming undergraduate students information literacy skills, a research team at the University of Michigan School of Information developed the Defense of Hidgeon, a web-based board game. We opted for a game in lieu of other approaches because what people are doing when they are playing good games is good learning. This article describes the game's backstory, how to navigate its 34-space game board, and special game-play features. The research team invited a class of undergraduate students to play the game, gave monetary awards to winning teams, and interviewed students about their game-play experiences to determine what they learned and obtain their suggestions for improvements to the game. The authors offer three premises for the redesign of the Defense of Hidgeon and discuss these premises with regard to the design of future information literacy games.