Feng-Ru Sheu Wins the 2017 Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant

CHICAGO — Feng-Ru Sheu has been named the 2017 winner of the American Library Association (ALA) Carroll Preston Baber Research Grant for her project entitled "Evaluating of Story-based Design Approach: Are Story-based Tutorials More Engaging?” The $3,000 grant supports innovative research that could lead to an improvement in library services to any specific group of people. The award was donated by Eric R. Baber, Newton, Kansas, in honor of his father, who was library director at Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University) for 27 years. Baber died in January 1991, leaving ALA an endowment to support the award in perpetuity.

The award committee, in its statement about the decision, said, “Through the years, instruction librarians have experimented with providing innovative techniques so students can perform research efficiently and successfully. With the pervasiveness of online course environments, information literacy instruction becomes even more challenging as face-to-face opportunities diminish. Particularly with students who have grown up in a media-rich environment, traditional information literacy videos may not be a viable solution. The proposal, 'Evaluation of Story-based Design Approach: Are Story-based Tutorials More Engaging?,' is a well-designed study and proposes using interactive digital media to provide ‘stories’ with research problems to which students can connect and then measuring the effectiveness of the story-based, interactive media vs. more traditional videos for online instruction. The results of this research will provide useful information to instruction librarians in all types of libraries – academic, public, and school – on the effectiveness of this technique. Additionally, all the modules will be openly accessible and license free, making them available to others to use.”

For guidelines and a list of previous winners see:
http://www.ala.org/offices/ors/orsawards/baberresearchgrant/babercarroll