Competency Statement: Design collaborative/individual learning experiences based on learning principles and theories.

Introduction

As librarians and information professionals, part of the job is to teach information literacy, information retrieval systems, and other skills to navigate the information environment we share with users and work in. Applying learning principles and theories to design learning experiences is a competency that allows me to disseminate those skills effectively for their studies, career, or everyday life, and continue the cycle of information-seeking.

Behaviorism

In early psychology studies of systematic observation of subjects, outward behavior change indicates evidence of learning, specifically through the relationship between stimulus and response. Popular theories of behaviorism are Pavlov’s classical conditioning, Thorndike’s trial and error, and Skinner’s operant conditioning (Booth, 2010). These theories explored how subjects associated stimuli with responses and the conditioning involved to achieve consistent behavior for desired responses and discourage behavior for undesired responses.

Teaching information literacy can benefit from behavioral theories, such as trial and error, to build information seeking strategies that produce desired results. For example, providing a toolbox of search strategies such as controlled vocabulary, Boolean operators, filters, or other parameters for users to play with allows them to learn through trial and error the best way to produce relevant results.

Cognitivism

As psychology studies evolved, an alternative learning theory challenged the passivity of behaviorism and proposed that internal information organizing and processing of meaningful patterns, influenced by motivational and emotional factors, contributed to knowledge formation, intellectual connections, and higher-order thinking (Booth, 2010). The psychology theorist Piaget suggested that individuals are constantly making sense of experiences by drawing connections to new information and revising old ideas, and that stages of child development and levels of maturation play a large part in effective absorption of information. This informs the “scaffolding” method of teaching, where the instructor can present an age or situationally appropriate “anchoring idea” as the foundation for new information, making it useful and meaningful.

With so much information coming at users competing for attention, the principles of cognitivism are useful to have when teaching information literacy in context that is appropriate to the level of the user to encourage meaningful connection for effective absorption. For example, academic librarians may consider different information literacy objectives for first year college students vs. graduating seniors, such as looking for CRAAP to evaluate Internet sources vs. navigating data model databases for capstone projects.

Constructivism

Constructivism differs from behaviorism and cognitivism by centering on learner and not the teacher. It poses that “learners create meaning from their environments by interpreting them through personal attributes, values, and perceptions” (Booth, 2010, p. 5). Individuals build their own context from knowledge constructed from their encounters in their social context. This is reinforced by concepts such as the zone of proximal development (ZPD), where an individual’s potential to learn is facilitated or prevented by the instructional environment, and situated learning, where an individual interacts with the learning content through a real-world simulation to produce meaningful and effective retention and transfer of information (Booth, 2010).

Video games are a great example of supporting constructivist learning for information literacy as they are simulated environments that allow learners to actively participate. The game “Papers, Please” is a game that puts the user in the role of a border official in Eastern Europe, checking different types of identification papers (3909 LLC, 2024). Players need to check permits for approval stamps and cross-check information between passports and other documents to spot discrepancies. These design elements can be models for designing an information literacy game that teaches how to identify and evaluate misinformation or disinformation.

Social learning theory

Studies in behaviorism were explored with animal subjects and was criticized for explaining learned behavior as a “product of directly experienced response consequences” influenced by inner forces and the environment (Bandura, 1971, p. 2). Social learning theory instead suggests that people behave unrestricted from their environment and natural instinct and have the capacity to learn by observation and example “without having to build up the patterns gradually by tedious trial and error,” and are also “capable of creating self-regulative influences… By managing the stimulus determinants of given activities and producing consequences for their own actions…to control their own behavior” (Bandura, 1971, p. 2). While learning direct experience or modeling, individuals go through a process of differential reinforcement that informs them of the advantages and disadvantages of behaving a certain way or can choose to apply successful models of behavior when mistakes would be costly. In this sense, one can say that social learning theory is a bridge between behaviorism and constructivism.

Evidence

The evidence I chose to present to demonstrate this competency include a video tutorial I created for colleagues to use a new developed tool, a slide deck explaining the seasons and weater in Japan to inform travel planning, and a video of a presentation on work and cultural differences in Japan and the US I conducted at GameHeads this summer.

Evidence #1 – Work Experience – Workflow tutorial

This video is the first part of a video tutorial I created for my colleagues at Ubisoft to create song queues that would display a list of songs that players can select to play in Rocksmith+. It involves making new entries and filling out data fields that makes the game run as expected, display text that is understandable to the user, and keep track of past song queues that may be reused in the future. Omitting these steps, doing it out of order, or adding to them may cause issues, such as not display the song queue, confusion with what the current song queue is, or god forbid, breaking the game and blocking workflows. At the risk of costly recovery operations, this video serves as an observational and competent model to mimic for desired outcomes.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to create a learning experience based on the observational learning concept in social learning theory.

Evidence #2 – Volunteer Experience – Japan Travel slideshow deck

In 2022, my cousin asked for some advice about planning a trip to Japan, since I was living there at the time and have experience planning my own trips. I often get this question from first-timers to Japan, so I decided to create a presentation about the weather and seasonal events. This gives people a better idea of ideal travel dates. Many people are unaware of Japan’s extreme weather, and with such limited time, it would be a shame to experience it when visiting at the wrong time of year. In addition, I wanted to offer alternatives to visiting as a summer vacation, which is when many people take big trips.

I also bring attention to periods to avoid. New Year’s is a big deal in Japan, but not with fireworks or lavish parties. Many places close from the end to a few days into the new year so that workers can spend time with their families. Also, Golden Week is a period at the end of April and beginning of May where a few holidays are within days of each other, so many people will take extended holidays, and more crowds of people will be out traveling, as well as surge pricing.

It is easy to be excited to travel to a new place like Japan. By sharing the advantages and disadvantages of certain travel behaviors, I trigger differential reinforcement, a concept of social learning theory, in my listeners with this evidence.

Evidence #3– Volunteer Experience – GameHeads Fireside chat: Making games in the US & Japan (External video link)

(Note: This video is about an hour and a half long)

This video is an informal presentation I made for a GameHeads session in August, 2024. GameHeads is an organization that give high-school and college students of color an opportunity to work with peers and experience building a video game while being guided and supported by professional game developers. Many of these young people who were eager to live and work in Japan. I had spent 10 years working at a video game company in Japan myself and experienced cultural differences that I felt would be useful to share with aspiring work expats to consider and prepare for.

The format of my presentation began with my own experience developing games in the US, aligning myself with a situation familiar to my audience. I then went into some general cultural differences and anecdotes that were jarring and opposite of how one might expect to behave in a creative and collaborative game development environment in the US. I also use the metaphor of comedy, a familiar and universally enjoyable topic, to reinforce the difference in work culture in Japan and the US. While the presentation was very informal, I was mindful of the maturity level of my audience and made sure to scaffold my content for meaningful connections, and also took a moment to gauge their interest and took questions. I received feedback that the GameHeads participants felt there were some good take-aways from my presentation.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to create a learning experience using cognitivism concept of an anchoring ideas familiar to my audience (in this case, the experience of making video games and comedy) to introduce the work and cultural differences in Japan.

Conclusion

In a rapidly developing world, technology has been making it easier for all kinds of information to reach individuals faster, easier, and in more different ways than ever. The rise of misinformation and the weaponizing of disinformation has also made it urgent for information professionals and their allies to educate others on information literacy and the tools to find and access accurate information. Content creators like @professorcasey, who teaches tech ethics University of Colorado, and @setupspawn, a PC enthusiast who shares tech tips for ordinary people, are great at teaching information literacy by relating it to current events and sharing accessible web tools to detect trending scams. The competency to understand learning theories and principles is foundational to my ability to design teaching materials, prepare dialogue, or advocate for tools that allow users to be in the best situation to make accurate and quality associations, or disassociations, with new information.

References

Bandura, A. (1971). Social learning theory. General Learning Corporation.

Booth, C. (2011). Reflective teaching, effective learning: Instructional literacy for library educators. American Library Association Editions. pp. 35-47.

3909 LLC. (2024). Papers, Please. https://papersplea.se/