You can find a TED Talk covering almost any topic. The great things about these talks are that they are well-done, engaging, and short, so they serve as perfect openers for your discussion.
An example of an Information Literacy event featuring a TED Talk was our "doodling" event. We viewed Doodlers, Unite!, a TED Talk by Sunni Brown; created zentangles (a form of structured doodling using repetitive patterns); and discussed doodling, using quotes from blog posts, books, newspaper articles, and peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles, such as the following: Andrade, J. (2009). What does doodling do? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(1), 100-106.
We also held the following events using TED Talks:
We had presentations by our Reference and Instruction Librarian, Stephanie Diaz, and by our Dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, Barbara Dewey.
One of our most fun and interesting events, Trivia with a Twist, was based on replicating portions of a study found in the following unlikely research article: Gruber, M.J., Gelman, B.D., & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486-496.
We came up with a format we call a Speak Easy which we define as “an opportunity for conversation in a relaxed, informal setting for anyone who wants to improve their public speaking, and learn something in the process.” We held a Superstition Speak Easy on Friday, February 13, and ended the event by playing a game we called “Superstition Sentences.” Following is one of the research articles we talked about: Damisch, L., Stoberock, B., & Mussweiler, T. (2010). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science 21(7), 1014-1020.
This 2015 event appears as a chapter in The First-Year Experience Cookbook, published by the Association of College & Research Libraries.
We were really happy when the core group of international students who had been attending our events asked if we would help them with the campus’s first Chinese New Year celebration. We created an activity based on the animals of the Chinese Zodiac, offering a prize to the student who was able to connect with someone from each of the 12 Zodiac signs.
During our Thinking About Thinking: It’s More Fun Than You Think event, students completed the Penn State Worry Questionnaire; learned about wishful thinking, creativity, thought suppression, and rumination; and played our Metacognition Memory Match, a Concentration-style game.
LEGO in the Library
Details about this event can be found in The Critical Thinking About Sources Cookbook, available through the ALA Store.
An Information Literacy Event
