Right off the bat Spina mentions the "point earning" schemes offered by Westlaw and LexisNexis to law students. Harking back to my law student days, I remember both those online legal researching programs offered students points for conducting legal research through their sites. These points could then be redeemed for prizes. And we were talking not just any old trinkets either, I still remember cashing in my Westlaw points after 3 years of school of an espresso machine that's still kicking after 4 years of use. Clearly, this points based system employed by Westlaw and LexisNexis was an attempt to get law students rely on their services and to develop a preference over their competitor. I can't remember too many times that my researching behavior was ever really altered by the points system though -- I simply had to be online legal research and I used which ever service was more intuitive to me.
I thought Spina's discussion on the gamification of librarian professional development was very interesting. Offering "visual representations of skills and knowledge that can be used on resumes and on social media spaces" seemed like an interesting concept. It'd be nice for an online portfolio to have these badges for the completion of webinars or attendance to workshops as opposed to a simple list. The entire idea seemed like the accumulation of boy scout merit badges in the best possible way.
I didn't realize you were a former attorney! And that's quite a strange place for gamification. Though I guess you're right that they were trying to get you hooked on one service over the other. I kind of hate how in law, even the libraries are competitive :-/ (My husband is an attorney for the record)
ReplyDeleteThey sure were. Still remember the stories of pages being torn from law school library books that were needed for class assignments. That's the problem with the combination of hyper-competition and the mandatory implementation of a curved grading system -- someone HAS to get the C's.
DeleteThese law school flashbacks are making me even happier I'm changing careers!
They sure were. Still remember the stories of pages being torn from law school library books that were needed for class assignments. That's the problem with the combination of hyper-competition and the mandatory implementation of a curved grading system -- someone HAS to get the C's.
DeleteThese law school flashbacks are making me even happier I'm changing careers!