As I write my reflection for this course, I think back at what the world was like before what I learned in this course. For starters, I’d be using Microsoft Word to type up this reflection to ensure that my paper had proper formatting and style. I’d probably be submitting this final assignment to the prof through some course management system such as cuLearn or blackboard, a system that I not only despise but that I find extremely clunky and not user friendly. Instead though, I’m writing this in Atom, saving it as Markdown file and will later be uploading it to my github account where I’ll then be sending a link to my prof through Slack so that he can assess the work that I’ve done for the course. This includes 9 reflections, my notes on my presentation, a final project and this reflection. All of these open to the world (eeekk…watch the spelling I tell myself).

As I’m currently a graduate student at the University of Ottawa doing a Masters in Information Science, I thought I’d base my final reflection from the perspective of an information studies student. When I first decided to take a history course as an elective for my degree, I wasn’t sure what to expect. At first, I thought I’d be a fish out water, that I’d have to spend a few weeks to catch up with everyone else because of the differences in content from information science and history. Turns out, were not all that different. In this course, we’ve learned the following:

1. Importance of separating content from its container
2. Using tools to extract information from websites (ie.wget).
3. Accessing and manipulating bibliographic information in Zotero. We looked at subject headings, MARC coding and my favourite word, SPARQL.
4. Manipulating, analyzing and reformatting of information and data
5. Organizing information and data into topics
6. Data visualization and mapping
7. Using relationships in information to create network diagrams
8. Online exhibits with the use of Omeka

These topics listed above early look like they could be part of a course being offered through the school of information studies and its my opinion that the skills and concepts that we learned in this course (HIST 5702W) should be taught to all MLIS students. In the course, we continually touched upon many of the same issues that relate to information studies; Open Access, organization of information, information research, search and seeking behaviour and information management to name a few. In addition to learning the theoretical concepts, the course had the added benefit of exploring some tools that allowed us to find, extract, manipulate and visualize information and data. Learning how to use these tools had the additional benefit of helping me learn and put into practice the skills that we learned in the course and that I’ve acquired elsewhere.

So to put everything into practice, I created my final project. As I currently work with maps at the library, I thought I’d combine what I know about maps with some of the concepts that that I learned in class. As a member of the Association of Canadian Map Librarians & Archives (ACMLA), I’ve been involved in providing workshops and presentations over the past few years during annual conferences. Some have involved the use of python programming language while others involved the geocoding of information. The goal of this final project was to create a tutorial to guide a user through the process of taking a map and putting it online. As simple as that sounded, it proved to be much more complex. I used twine as the application to create the non-linear story or game as this was a tool that we learned in class. While still at the concept or story board stage, I discovered that there were many tangents that could be explored by the user going through the story. In the end, I had to create a lot more content then I had previously thought. I didn’t mind as much as I knew this could be a valuable tool to build that could aid staff at our library (and probably others) and students explore the options of getting a map online. But with all this content, I’ll have to develop a method to ensure that I maintain the content from the game. The game starts with showing the user ways on how to find maps and put maps online (static or interactive). These are some of the more basic mapping skills. For more intermediate and advanced users, the tutorial also shows the user 3 methods of georeferencing (each have their own reason) and 2 methods of geocoding. These more advanced tutorials were developed in greater detail when compared to the more basic mapping tutorials. The point of the game is to guide individuals to put a map online, while taking into account their skill level as well as the complexity of the task. The more simple the task, the fewer points are awarded (10 to 20) while the more complex the task, the more points will be awarded to the user (30 to 40).

To organize the content of my tutorial, I used many of the skills that we learned in the tutorials from the programming historian. I really liked how the tutorials would start by showing the users some basic information and then they would make their tutorial progressively more difficult. I also noticed that there was a gap in some of the map-related tutorials, where as they only showed some of basics of mapping and not more complex tasks such as geocoding. In all instances of map-related tutorials, there was an assumption that latitude and longitude information was always given in the table. In my experience, this is a rare case and most of the times latitude and longitude needs to be extracted from other forms of geographic information (Street address, postal code, city, town, etc.).

Other benefits of creating the game was learning twine 2.0 and the various options and syntax used to create the game. This was difficult at first, but as time went by, it became much simpler to grasp the concepts and tweak the game to make it my own. The next step in the development of the game is to have other colleagues and/or other students test out the game. Having students from class test the game earlier this week gave me some insights of tweaks that I did for the final version. I think that having a larger audience with various skillsets will better help in the development of the game. I also hope to extract some of the geocoding tutorials and make them as stand-alone tutorials for websites such as the programming historian or the geospatial librarian. This would have the added benefit of having my work shared with a broader audience and to gather greater feedback.

The creation of this online game got me thinking about the value of creating games to teach users specific tasks. Some colleagues of mine at the Carleton University library have modified a pre-existing board game that when played, teaches the students that play the various components that are needed to complete assignments. The game was played a few months ago with an undergraduate class and from the impression and remarks of my colleagues, this was quite the success. This got me thinking - Would it be as successfull if it were a digital game on twine or another platform? Or would the tutorials that I created be better if they were individuals tutorials with no game component? Does allowing the user to make decisions where points are awarded add anything to the learning experience of the user? I think that in the right context, games (in person or digital) add tremendous value as it allows the user to better comprehend not only the content but it also allows for a bit more context. But as mapping is extremely visual, it would have maybe made more sense to create some form of tutorial that is more visual and less textual than a twine game. In the coming months, I hope to explore the idea of using a more visual style of game to offer up the tutorials.

As great as it was to complete the game, I find the greatest benefit from creating the game was the process that I took, which consisted of documenting various steps using markdown language and Atom. It has helped me cement a good documenting workflow that I hope to use in the coming months and years (and maybe decades?). The thought that all of these notes that I take are archival, easily transferable to other formats for use on multiple platforms makes me sleep better at night. Like the saying goes, it’s all about the journey, not the destination…And the tools and concepts that I learned in this class will better help me as I grow to become a better information professional.