Making a First-Year Experience Course iPad Intensive: a cautionary tale

This presentation tells the story of a collaboration between a librarian and an course instructor to make a First-Year Experience (FYE) course more engaging and enjoyable through the integration of iPads into the course. The FYE course has modules designed to promote information literacy and critical thinking skills in which students learn how to locate and evaluate sources, incorporate sources into their projects, and cite them properly. However, we wanted to infuse information literacy and critical thinking throughout the course, rather than relying on stand-alone modules. To do this and make this process more appealing, students analyzed 4 films from classic horror cinema in cycles of: 1) a film showing, 2) outside readings and a quiz on cultural-historical themes in each film, 3) librarian-led instruction sessions followed by outside research to find academic sources on those themes; and 4) creating documentaries (3-5 minutes in length) incorporating their reading, research and analysis, and 5) by in-class discussion and critiques. Documentaries (comprised of images, text, background music, and voiceover narration) were created by students in groups of 4 or 5 on iPads using the Adobe Voice app. An example will be screened for the audience. Finally, the presentation will reflect on lessons learned from the experiment and how we plan to improve the course in the future