Hi everyone! While the official date has been and gone, one of the core tenets of IGD is that any library that wants to host it should be able to make it work for their particular interests and needs – and that extends to the date of your local event. To highlight this, and to give us a little additional content for our week after, we’ll be posting a couple of guest posts from the University of Kentucky, also known as UK, who are running an IGD event this coming week: one introducing their plans for the event and the second reporting on how it all went.
International Games Day at UK
The University of Kentucky (UK) will be hosting an international games day as part of its International Education Week activities. UK Libraries is partnering with the Media Depot (Analytics and Technology) and the Robert E. Hemenway Writing Center (College of Arts and Sciences) to host the event on Wednesday, November 19th. This date was chosen because it was in the middle of International Education Week and a peak day for students to be in the library, so there would be more of an opportunity to foster interaction among students from different countries. A number of ideas were explored, including hooking up with a group in another part of the world, but the date and time did not provide the opportunity to make that connection.
The event is still evolving but current plans are to have four gaming areas. There will be card games, board games, and video games available. In order to promote global awareness, a “Jeopardy” game has been developed and incorporates questions solicited from the international student population. To create a festive atmosphere there will be fresh popped popcorn and soft drinks available.
Students have been involved in a large part of planning. Undergraduate student interns developed and executed the public relations plan, students from the International Conversation Hour provided “Jeopardy” questions about their countries, and an undergraduate student intern designed the Jeopardy Powerpoint. The event will be held in “the Hub @ W.T.’s.” (also known as Willie T’s by the student population) in the William T. Young Library from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The goal of the event is to promote cultural awareness among our students by providing a venue for our foreign and domestic students to come together in an unstructured social atmosphere. This is the first time such an event has been hosted, but if successful, it could be an annual event as part of International Education Week.
Thanks to the good folks from UK for sharing this! It’s a great use of games as a way to build community in a low-pressure, friendly context. I look forward to hearing – and sharing – how it all went!