New Media: Engaging and Educating the YouTube Generation

Today's undergraduates are clearly comfortable as consumers of technology and new media—purchasing ring tones for their cell phones and tunes for their iPods, text-messaging from handheld devices, scanning and tinkering with photos, keeping up with their Facebook friends and watching viral YouTube videos, sometimes all simultaneously. We share examples of classroom assignments integrated with library support services that engage today's undergraduates with academic materials in a variety of course contexts. We discuss how specific arrangements of library learning spaces and the alignment of space and staffing can help undergraduate students succeed with new media projects for class assignments.