Teaching Public Library Administration through Epistemic Gaming

This paper describes the design of an innovative educational experience that took place during the summer of 2011 with a cohort of library science students at Appalachian State University. This group of students, working online in their own virtual public libraries, engaged in an extended epistemic game that required the participants to undertake the experience as if they were practicing professionals in charge of a library. The paper describes, through analysis of an end-of-course questionnaire and follow-up interviews conducted one year after the completion of the course, students' perceptions of the ways in which the epistemic gaming format employed in the course affected their learning experience.