We sent the winner of this year’s Innovation in Librarianship Award, Breanne Kirsch, to EDUCAUSE in Chicago. Bree kindly agreed to write up a recap of the conference for CUP:

Attending EDUCAUSE was a wonderful experience. I learned a great deal about trends and what is currently happening in higher education with a focus on technology. I also had the opportunity to speak with a few individuals that had digital media creation studios at their institutions and were willing to share information with me since we are hoping to create one of these in our library in the next several years. I had the chance to attend a variety of programs and visit with a number of exhibitors during EDUCAUSE.

One of the newest trends that I learned about at EDUCAUSE was Esports. There are a growing number of high schools and colleges that offer Esports as an option for students to participate in, whether it is a club or varsity division. During the program I attended on Esports, the speakers asked people to raise their hands if their colleges or universities were considering an Esports program and the majority of attendees raised their hands. This is likely going to be a growing area in technology and higher education that libraries can help support. At Briar Cliff University, our Games Group meets in the library every other week to hold a Smash Brothers tournament and our President has expressed interest in the possibility of beginning an Esports initiative on campus. I was thrilled to be able to learn more about this trend and bring back information from vendors about how to begin an Esports program. They even had an Esports arena at EDUCAUSE to showcase what it involved.

Another area that was represented in over 20 programs or posters at EDUCAUSE was virtual reality in higher education. This is an area of personal interest, since I enjoy science fiction and books or movies like Ready Player One. I purchased an Oculus Go for our library this past year and can see the educational possibilities of VR. At EDUCAUSE, there were programs about how to create 360-degree educational experiences for students as well as how to use other VR content for the classroom. I played with my iPhone and created a 360-degree tour of my library using the Google Street View app. It’s not perfect by any means, but there are definitely educational possibilities with VR.

One final thing I was looking at during EDUCAUSE was furniture, since we need new furniture on the Mezzanine level of our library. I saw some helpful examples of mobile, flexible furniture at EDUCAUSE in the exhibits. Active learning furniture was highlighted at EDUCAUSE as an important move in higher education.

Overall, attending EDUCAUSE was a wonderful experience. I am so thankful for Cambridge University Press giving me the opportunity to attend and learn as much as I did during EDUCAUSE. I look forward to applying much of what I learned at Briar Cliff University’s Bishop Mueller Library and sharing what I learned with my colleagues.