The surge of popular interest in virtual reality (VR), largely driven by recent advances making the hardware and software for VR development and use accessible to average consumers, is showing all the signs of a durable trend. One of those signs is active uptake in the academy, both for research (where it was pioneered) and in the classroom (where its footing is less certain). To be sure, VR offers exciting and relatively underdeveloped pedagogical terrain for teachers looking to enhance their curricula by deploying technologies that might optimize the learning process. This article offers a critical reflection on one such effort, specifically, our academic team’s grant-funded digital humanities research project called Focused Associational Thinking-Virtual Reality (FAT-VR). The main premise of the project was to create a virtual reality environment where students could cultivate creative fluency in divergent thinking. Such competencies are thought to afford students with a means of “thinking things together” in the service of transdisciplinary inquiry and problem solving. This essay recounts how, as we attempted to “move forward” by harnessing VR, we often found ourselves going “backward” and “in circles” due to technological glitches and challenging student feedback. Putting our digital pedagogy project in conversation with phenomenological philosophy and critical theory, we offer a provocation on how forward motion can sometimes set us back pedagogically, and how disorienting experiences—even failure—can become productive.
Can LIS curricula dedicated to makerspaces provide an authentic learning experience for future librarians interested in makerspace-adjacent careers? This article presents a case study in which an authentic learning framework is applied to a newly developed LIS graduate-level course on makerspaces. We detail how one class project—entitled “Bibliocircuitry: Old Books, New Ideas”—challenged students to use their newly learned skills to upcycle a hardcover book into a personalized artifact. This article outlines emerging patterns and themes from an analysis of survey responses from 13 of the 15 students in the course. Findings reveal the project readily maps to authentic learning standards, encourages learning, and facilitates reflection (including the negotiation of uncertainty, overcoming debilitating perfectionism, and transformative joy). The study broadens curricular design interventions for LIS educators, highlights the need for deep learning with technologies, and offers an opportunity to narrow the preparation gap between information professionals and the technical and social competencies required in makerspaces. The implications of these findings for the field of LIS pedagogy emphasize the importance of an authentic learning project both to disrupt the absence of LIS maker curricula and to reimagine current one-shot, pressured, makerspace training.
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