Cyber House Rules: how to host a winning virtual game night
Presented by
- Abigail Morgan (Miami University)
- Ginny Boehme (Miami University)
Description
Our institution has hosted monthly board game nights for our campus community for the last several years. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were forced to cancel our in-person events and rethink how we would deliver game nights going forward. While pivoting to a virtual event seemed like the obvious solution, we encountered numerous setbacks in our quest to make an online game night a reality. In spring 2020, we experimented with online gaming platforms in order to ascertain the feasibility of holding virtual library game nights. This included a pilot event with library staff. Throughout these experiments we ran into many challenges, including: fickle internet speeds and computing power; a steep learning curve for the online platforms we were interested in using; limitations of the software available to us at the time; and technological comfort levels of the committee members. These impediments were extreme enough to delay our second attempt until spring of 2021, after a year-long hiatus. We will discuss how we worked to overcome these challenges for our second attempt, and will give attendees the opportunity to reflect on how they can host similar outreach events in their own institutions.
About
Abigail Morgan is a Social Sciences Librarian at Miami University where she liaisons to the anthropology, business, economics, marketing, and teacher education departments, manages their collections, and instructs information literacy sessions. She holds an M.Ed. in Education from Ohio University and an M.L.I.S. from University of Maryland, College Park. She also serves as co-chair of the Library Gaming Knights planning committee. One of her favorite job duties is purchasing board games for the Libraries’ instructional materials collection.
Ginny Boehme is a Science Librarian in Edgar W. King Library at Miami University, where she liaises with the biology; environmental sciences; kinesiology, nutrition, and health; microbiology; and nursing departments. She holds an M.L.I.S. from the University of Alabama. In addition to her duties as a reference and instruction librarian, she does a lot of work with undergraduate student teaching and engagement, including co-teaching in Miami's First-Year Research Experience program and co-chairing the Library Game Knights planning committee.
