Facilitating Student Engagement with Primary Sources through Gamification

Primary Presenter: Holley Long

Co-Presenter: Thea Lindquist

Organization: University of Colorado Boulder

Role: Digital Initiatives Librarian

Track: Research Presentation

Level: For Mere Mortals

Abstract: With the wealth of digital collections available, greater opportunities exist than ever before to integrate primary sources into humanities curricula. Studies, however, indicate that these collections are underutilized because they lack tools to support pedagogical objectives and enhance student engagement. This presentation will report on an initiative to develop one such tool, Primary Source Corps, an educational game that leverages gamification and crowdsourcing to meet students’ needs for improved findability and contextualization of primary sources.

Bio: Holley Long is the digital initiatives librarian at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on issues related to digital collection creation and usability topics. She is interested in exploring technologies and techniques to develop new services and tools that enhance digital collections. Thea Lindquist is the history librarian at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she has worked since 2001. Her research interests include digital collections, humanities librarianship, and linked open data for libraries, archives and museums.

Description: With the wealth of digital collections currently available, ranging from Paul’s Epistles on papyrus to news footage of the Watergate hearings, greater opportunities exist than ever before to integrate primary sources into humanities curricula. Recent studies, however, indicate that collections of online primary sources are underutilized despite their extraordinary promise for use in the classroom because these collections often lack the tools necessary to support pedagogical objectives and enhance student engagement. Finding ways to bridge this gap with educational technology is essential as digital collections propagate, Web 2.0 technologies pervade students’ lives, and work with primary sources becomes an increasingly important component of university humanities curricula. To help address this need, librarians at the University of Colorado Boulder interviewed students and faculty in humanities disciplines to discover ways in which educational technology can facilitate student engagement with online primary sources. Several key findings emerged from these conversations that informed the development of Primary Source Corps, an online educational game that leverages gamification and crowdsourcing to meet students’ needs for improved findability and contextualization of primary sources. This presentation will introduce Primary Source Corps, elaborate upon the user needs that informed its development, and discuss the broader trends of gamification and crowd sourcing within this context.